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The Ecology Of Transparency Reloaded, Seth F. Kreimer

All Faculty Scholarship

As Justice Stewart famously observed, "[t]he Constitution itself is neither a Freedom of Information Act nor an Official Secrets Act." What the Constitution's text omits, the last two generations have embedded in "small c" constitutional law and practice in the form of the Freedom of Information Act and a series of overlapping governance reforms including Inspectors General, disclosure of political contributions, the State Department’s “Dissent Channel,” the National Archives Information Security Oversight Office, and the publication rights guaranteed by New York Times v. United States. These institutions constitute an ecology of transparency.

The late Justice Scalia argued that the …

The Freedom Of Information Act And The Ecology Of Transparency, Seth F. Kreimer

University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law

The Framers’ approbation of a unitary executive rested in important part on the belief that the unitary executive’s actions were apt to be more “narrowly watched and readily suspected” by an informed public opinion than those of a plural executive. Yet the body of the Constitution provides no right to public information. What the Constitutional text omits, the last generation has embedded as a part of modern constitutional practice in the Freedom of Information Act. Some critics have deplored FOIA as a “romantic” effort at “self help oversight”, superfluous in light of the checks and balances of divided government. Others …