Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2017
Abstract
The U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) allows any person to request any agency record for any reason. This model has been copied worldwide and celebrated as a structural necessity in a real democracy. Yet in practice, this Article argues, FOIA embodies a distinctively “reactionary” form of transparency. FOIA is reactionary in a straightforward, procedural sense in that disclosure responds to ad hoc demands for information. Partly because of this very feature, FOIA can also be seen as reactionary in a more substantive, political sense insofar as it saps regulatory capacity; distributes government goods in an inegalitarian fashion; and contributes to a culture of adversarialism and derision surrounding the domestic policy bureaucracy while insulating the far more secretive national security agencies, as well as corporations, from similar scrutiny. If this Article’s core claims are correct to any significant degree, then open government advocates in general, and progressives in particular, ought to rethink their relationship to this landmark law.
Disciplines
Administrative Law | Constitutional Law | Human Rights Law | International Law | Law
Recommended Citation
David Pozen,
Freedom of Information Beyond the Freedom of Information Act,
165
U. Pa. L. Rev.
1097
(2017).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2022
Included in
Administrative Law Commons, Constitutional Law Commons, Human Rights Law Commons, International Law Commons
Comments
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