Under the Freedom of Information Act, one need not be a lawyer to file a lawsuit. A clever, committed advocate can sometimes defeat a team of government lawyers and win disclosure of denied documents. On the other hand, an inept, overzealous or unlucky litigant can leave a trail of legal wreckage that will make the lives of other FOIA requesters more difficult.
A newly updated guidebook will help any would-be litigant, whether a lawyer or not, to avoid many of the pitfalls of FOIA litigation and to realistically assess the chances of success. Don’t file suit without it.
“Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws 2008” was edited by Harry A. Hammitt, Marc Rotenberg, John A. Verdi, and Mark S. Zaid. It can be purchased from Harry Hammitt’s web site or from the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.