The OLC's Opinions
Opinions published by the OLC, including those released in response to our FOIA lawsuit
This Reading Room is a comprehensive database of published opinions written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It contains the approximately 1,400 opinions published by the OLC in its online database and the opinions produced in Freedom of Information Act litigation brought by the Knight Institute, including opinions about the Pentagon Papers, the Civil Rights Era, and the War Powers Act. It also contains indexes of unclassified OLC opinions written between 1945 and February 15, 1994 (these indexes were created by the OLC and intended to be comprehensive). We have compiled those indexes into a single list here and in .csv format here. This Reading Room also contains an index of all classified OLC opinions issued between 1974 and 2021, except those classified or codeword-classified at a level higher than Top Secret (the OLC created this index, too, and intended it to be comprehensive).
The Knight Institute will continue updating the reading room with new records. To get alerts when the OLC publishes a new opinion in its database, follow @OLCforthepeople on Twitter.
Showing 1851–1860 of 2202
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Draft Memorandum Re Supreme Court Desegregation Decisions
This memo suggested revisions to a draft White House memo on Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, a Supreme Court case giving courts broad authority to order remedies in response to segregation. The memo, written by then-Assistant Attorney General Rehnquist, suggested that White House Counsel John Dean add a sentence describing the decision’s discussion of limitations on permissible busing.
5/16/2022
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Restoration of Full Civil Rights to the Late General Robert E. Lee
This opinion informed White House Counsel that an 1898 act removing the disabilities imposed by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment did not restore the civil rights of Robert E. Lee, because the act only applied to persons living at the time of its enactment. It also advised that a presidential pardon could not restore Lee’s civil rights. (Lee’s civil rights were ultimately restored through a 1975 congressional resolution).
5/16/2022
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State Implementation of Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970
This opinion provided comments to materials prepared by the Civil Rights Division to assist state implementation of the Voting Rights Act.
5/16/2022
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Power of Congressional Committee to Compel Appearance or Testimony of “White House Staff”
This opinion reviews whether, if any, members of the White House staff can be exempt from appearing or testifying before a congressional committee. The opinion concludes by dividing the Executive Office of the President roughly in three groups: 1) the president and his closest advisors, who are absolutely immune from inquiry; 2) other members of the White House staff, who are afforded only some form of testimonial privilege, such as refusing to testify with respect to any official business; 3) Cabinet members, who are obliged to respond to congressional inquiry, but cannot be interrogated on what takes place at a Cabinet meeting. The OLC does not provide release dates for its opinions, so the release date listed is the date on which the opinion was authored. The original opinion is available at https://justice.gov/olc/page/file/1225961/download.
2/5/1971
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Federal laws regulating political activity of corporations
In this memo, the OLC outlined the federal laws regulating corporate political activity, including 18 U.S.C. § 610, which prohibited the direct and indirect use of corporate funds in connection with federal political campaigns. It also noted that 15 U.S.C. § 791(h) prohibited holding companies from contributing to federal or state campaigns.
5/16/2022
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Re: Delay in Induction of Judge into Office Following His Confirmation by the Senate
Memorandum for Harlington Wood, Jr., Associate Deputy Attorney General, from William H. Rehnquist, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, Re: Delay in Induction of Judge into Office Following His Confirmation by the Senate (Nov. 27, 1970). The original opinion is available at www.justice.gov/olc/file/1494941/download
4/15/2022
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Views as to whether there are any substantial legal difficulties involved in using devices to trace telephone calls
5/16/2022
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President's Commission on Campus Unrest
5/16/2022
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Constitutionality of the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment
Although it is difficult to resolve with confidence the substantial arguments that can be made for and against a proposed amendment seeking to employ Congress's power of the purse to end hostilities in Vietnam, the Administration should oppose the amendment as a matter of policy, if not as one of constitutional law. The OLC does not provide release dates for its opinions, so the release date listed is the date on which the opinion was authored. The original opinion is available at www.justice.gov/file/20831/download.
6/2/1970
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Constitutionality of Federal Allocation of Funds on the Basis of the Number of "Minority Group Children" within a State
In this opinion, then-Assistant Attorney General William Rehnquist rejected the theory, rooted in Justice Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, that the Constitution is “color blind” and therefore prohibits racial classifications of any kind. Rehnquist explained that most Supreme Court and lower court cases had left open the possibility that “benign” racial classifications could be constitutional. He wrote, however, that “whether this will ultimately prove to be a workable distinction, and whether it is entirely consistent with the logic of broad application of the equal protection clause when invoked by minority groups, admit of reasonable doubt as a matter of original inquiry.”
5/16/2022