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 2061–2070 of 2202
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Title VI of the Civil Rights Act: School Lunch Program in Private Schools.
10/27/2020
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Authority to "take action" under section 232(b) of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
10/27/2020
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Attached inquiry from U.S. Attorney for Northern District of Illinois [regarding application of the Hatch Act to AUSA running for elected office]
10/27/2020
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Removal of the Comptroller of the Currency.
10/27/2020
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Legal Status of Disabled Judge.
10/27/2020
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Whether Executive Order No. 10925 of March 6, 1961, as amended by Executive Order No. 11114 of June 22, 1963, together providing for the inclusion of prescribed non‐ discrimination clauses in government contracts, may be applied to the employment practice
10/27/2020
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Presidential inability and electoral college proposals.
10/27/2020
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Public Law 88‐313‐‐Issuance of permits to alien amateur radio operators
10/27/2020
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Draft proposals dealing with presidential succession, a vacancy in the office of Vice President, presidential inability and the election of the President and Vice President.
10/27/2020
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Whether it would be appropriate to protect from discrimination on account of race, color or national origin the contractors and subcontractors on Federal‐aid highway projects and those who seek to obtain such contracts and subcontracts
This opinion advised the Bureau of Public Roads that it could issue regulations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibiting racial discrimination in Federal-aid highway projects. Although the OLC noted that it was hesitant to conclude that contractors and subcontractors fell within the protections of Title VI, it approved the Bureau’s proposed regulations because it discerned Congressional “interest” in procurement practices with respect to the Federal-aid highway system expressed in other statutes.
5/16/2022