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 1931–1940 of 2202
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Memorandum entitled "Authority of the Federal Communications Commission to Prohibit Cigarette Commercials on Radio and Television"
10/27/2020
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Manhattan Joint Strike Force
7/27/2020
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Opinion on certain legal questions relating to (1) the proposed Federal Communications Commission rule banning cigarette advertising on radio and television, and (2) the Federal Trade Commission rule, adopted in 1964 and vacated in 1965, which required di
10/27/2020
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Grand jury requirement in District of Columbia
7/27/2020
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Interdepartmental Action Plan for Civil Disturbances
10/27/2020
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Closing of Government Offices in Memory of Former President Eisenhower
This opinion concludes that 5 U.S.C. § 6105, which prohibits any executive departments from being "closed as a mark to the memory of a deceased former official of the United States," does not bar the president from closing all government offices on the day of former President Eisenhower's state funeral, since legislative history suggests the original purpose of § 6105 was to prevent the head of a department from closing it to mark the death of a lesser official. 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/935966/download.
4/1/1969
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Request for expense vouchers connected with James Hoffa's trial
7/27/2020
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Proposals of Civil Service Commission (1) to amend 5 CFR § 735.105; and (2) to annotate ethical conduct regulations
7/27/2020
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Legislative proposal to empower IRS agents to carry firearms, etc.
7/27/2020
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Procedure for Claiming Executive Privilege
10/27/2020