Ark. Gov swings again at state FOIA

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has proposed a bill to undercut the highly regarded transparency regime of that state's Freedom of Information Act.

I was at the Arkansas Capitol when a veritable mob of citizen opposition stopped an anti-transparency reform bill in the spring. Try, try again must be the Governor's m.o.

My friend and colleague Professor Robert Steinbuch testified effectively against the spring reform bill. Here he is telling Conduit News Arkansas why the newest incarnation is no good either.

UPDATE, Sept. 16. My understanding is that the bill was gutted this week. A substantially narrowed enacted version applies only to secret information about the governor's security detail. The matter was discussed on Arkansas Week.

Citizens defeat attack on state transparency law

A bill that would have gutted the state Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was defeated in committee in the Arkansas House on March 29. A more modest bill amending the open meetings act passed.

My friend Professor Robert Steinbuch testified decisively against the comprehensive HB1726, which read like a wish list of transparency opponents, dismantling one provision after another of the state FOIA. I was there.

Bill sponsor Rep. David Ray presented the bill to the House State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee, though there can be little doubt that the bill was devised by lobbyists such as Arkansas's municipalities or counties. The bill attacked the strongest points of the FOIA that mark differences from state norms, such as Arkansas's short, three-day turnaround and lack of attorney-client privilege.

In fairness, there is room for negotiation on some of these points. An excellent one-time student of mine and Steinbuch's, Deputy Attorney General Ryan Owsley presented the bill alongside Ray. Having long served as opinions counsel, Owsley knows the FOIA well, and he fairly criticized the law for areas in which its well meaning text might be outpaced by practical realities. For example, record custodians say they're too often unduly stressed by the three-day deadline, especially when redactions are routinely required from today's typically voluminous electronic records rife with exempt personally identifying information.

But the bill proponents claimed too much. They whinged, for example, about record custodians compelled "to violate the law" and place themselves in legal jeopardy. In fact, to my knowledge, no Arkansas judge has ever demanded that custodians respond to requests other than reasonably, notwithstanding the three-day deadline. Like the 20-day deadline of the federal Freedom of Information Act, the three-day deadline is largely notional in practice. Its more salient admonition is that when records are immediately available, they should be provided immediately. A better bill might codify the de facto oversight process for voluminous productions.

Bill proponents moreover obfuscated. They articulated purported horror stories of FOIA abuse amounting to harassment of public officials. But their stories hardly bore out.

One oft repeated claim in the hearing was that a FOIA requester made a request of a school district that would have yielded 800,000 records and taken two years to process. But there was a lot of information missing from this claim.

For starters, no one ever said that the records were produced, only asked for. I could make a request tomorrow for all the records of a school district, and then someone could testify with outrage that a requester demanded millions of records. Neither side is well served by overbreadth. It's not unusual at all for an ordinary-citizen requester to over-ask, and then for a custodian to work with a requester to help narrow the request to what the requester really wants. The two years' labor claim was always made in the conditional tense, so it seems the referenced situation was somehow resolved without a crisis.

Second, no one ever said what medium or format the 800,000 records were in. I once FOIAd the voter rolls for several ZIP codes in Arkansas. If every one of those files was considered a "record," then I FOIAd some million records. But I received them in just a few minutes as a kind election official downloaded the data to a USB stick for me.

Third, no one ever said anything about the content of the 800,000 records. Maybe the request was justified. Journalists in the hearing testified to matters such as the discovery of juvenile abuse through public record requests. If that's what those records revealed, then I say, get to work.

Many police testified in favor of the bill. One police witness complained about requests from the ACLU investigating police conduct. I'm not sure I have a problem with those requests. Remarkably, one police witness complained because a journalist's investigation of a fatal shooting by police determined that the shooting was justified. Was the officer hoping for a different conclusion? Exoneration hardly suggests that the records were ill sought to begin with.

Insofar as the bill sought to tackle points of the FOIA that might benefit from fair-minded reform, the problem with HB1726 was procedural as well as substantive. Surely as a matter of political strategy, the bill was introduced late in the session, when legislative committees are overworked—the instant hearing went well into the night—and tend to be less scrutinizing of what they pass.

The bill was introduced on a Monday and immediately came up in committee on Wednesday. It was stunning and telling that so many citizens organized to turned out against the bill so fast. In the interim, the state FOIA advisory body, a legislatively constituted entity that exists for the very purpose of vetting FOIA legislation, obliged the timeline with an emergency meeting on Tuesday. But Rep. Ray was a no-show and complained at the hearing that he had had a conflict. He blamed the advisory group for his timeline.

Disappointingly, HB1726 came to committee with the support of Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. A young aid represented the Governor at the hearing, and I could not help but think that he was set up to take the heat. One witness aptly pointed out that transparency is a plank in the state Republican platform. This was not Gov. Sanders's only recent embarrassment.

A second bill, sponsored by Rep. Mary Bentley, passed the committee later in the night. HB1610 would set a one-third-of-members threshold to trigger the open meetings act. Like other jurisdictions, Arkansas has struggled with the threshold question. To the aggravation of municipality lobbyists, the state supreme court has held that the act is triggered by even a two-person meeting if transparency would be subverted.

The bill hardly got a full hearing in the committee. Because of the late hour after the HB1726 debacle, the committee limited witnesses on each side to 15 minutes in sum. But they testified in the order they signed up. So time ran out on the opposition side upon citizen witnesses who were not as effective as advocates such as Professor Steinbuch and attorney Joey McCutchen.

I dared think that HB1726 was a mere smokescreen to push through HB1610. But HB1726 was such a disaster that it's hard to believe so much thought went into a concerted strategy.

Professor Steinbuch is author of the treatise, The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (LexisNexis 8th ed. 2022). I was a co-author of the preceding fourth, fifth, and sixth editions. The book originated with Professor John Watkins in 1988.

Below is the hearing on both bills on March 29. The hearing is remarkable for putting on exhibit the wide range of constituencies that support and oppose transparency in state and local government, and their reasons.

Arkansas bill would compel admin sharing at two public law schools, saving money for education

On March 29, I testified on a bill in the Arkansas legislature that would consolidate back-office functions of the state's two law schools, making more money available for the educational mission.

Senator Mark Johnson generously invited me to present with him his SB370 to the Arkansas Senate Education Committee. The bill furthers a theme I articulated in a 2011 white paper before I left Arkansas for New England.

In the 2011 paper, I posited that Arkansas might provide more and better opportunities to students at both Fayetteville and Little Rock law schools if the two public schools were not locked into "pseudo-competition," but, rather, shared administrative services as one law school on two campuses. I roughly estimated a savings of $800,000 to $1.2m, which could be used to enhance the program of legal education.

Rutgers University did exactly that in 2015, combining its New York-proximate Newark school into a two-campus institution with its capital-proximate Camden school, despite their locations at opposite ends of New Jersey. Penn State presently is planning to merge its law schools at capital-proximate Carlisle and research-oriented University Park.

Of the 25 states with less than median population in the United States, Arkansas is one of only three with two public law schools. The others are Kentucky and Kansas. Kentucky has five million people to Arkansas’s three million. Kansas has two public law schools only because of Washburn’s unusual history as one of the last remaining municipal universities in the nation. If one compares the states of the Eighth Circuit, only Arkansas and Missouri have two public law schools. Missouri has double Arkansas’s population and also has two private schools.

SB370 does not go as far as the merger I proposed in 2011, as effected at Rutgers and planned for Penn State, but the bill would take a step in that direction by merging back-office functions without affecting student-facing services. There's no good reason for both schools to be maintaining separate operations in advancement, for example. The advancement professional in Little Rock alone earns more than $109,000, plus benefits.

Senator Johnson asked me to address in particular for the committee any potential ramifications for ABA accreditation for the schools, were SB370 to become law. For the most part, SB370 will have no effect at all on accreditation, because the bill does not affect the program of legal education.

As written, SB370 proposes a "joint dean," which was a stumbling block. As long as Arkansas wishes to retain two separately and fully accredited law schools, each will have to have a chief administrative officer, whatever the person is called. The two deans presently earn about a quarter million dollars each per year, give or take, plus benefits. I told the committee, there will have to be two deans. But they need not earn so much in a semi-combined institution. Each of Rutgers's campuses retains a dean, but they split the administrative supplement to their faculty salaries.

Senator Johnson already was aware of the "joint dean" issue and had prepared an amendment for the committee. However, a senator objected to viewing the bill without the amendment engrossed, so Senator Johnson pulled the bill for re-engrossment.  With the legislative session waning, the bill might not have time to come back to committee for a vote. But the idea will remain sound, and I am hopeful that it will have its day. The students of the state's two public law schools all deserve the best and fullest range of opportunities that Arkansas higher education has to offer.

I am grateful to Senator Johnson for his kind and erudite engagement with my 2011 paper and the invitation to join him, and to my friend and colleague Professor Robert Steinbuch for helping to coordinate my visit to Arkansas.

Chag Pesach sameach, happy First Contact Day

Mosaic in Netherlands, reading, "בשמאלה עשר וכבוד"
("in her left hand riches and honor") (Proverbs 3:16),
showing "Kohanim hands."
(Kleuske via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0)

Passover periodically coincides with First Contact Day, as it does this year, on April 5, 2023.

Passover is a major Jewish holiday, thus moves with the lunisolar Hebrew calendar. The cause for celebration is not exclusive to Judaism, as the holiday marks the Israelite escape from slavery in Egypt. Passover was on April 5 most recently in 1985, 1993, and 2004, but it won't happen again until 2069.

April 5 is also First Contact Day, a delightful celebration from the fictional Star Trek universe marking the day that earthbound humans first learn they are not alone in the universe. Vulcans revealed, or will reveal, themselves to humans on April 5, 2063, so the holiday often is identified with the Vulcan hand gesture of fingers paired and separated in a "V."

There's more connection between the two holidays than an occasional overlap on the calendar. In 1967, Leonard Nimoy, the actor who first played Mr. Spock, the famous Vulcan of Star Trek lore, borrowed the hand gesture from his Jewish heritage.  The Take explained the origin:

[Nimoy] drew upon childhood memories of Jewish synagogue services he attended with his Yiddish-speaking grandfather. The V-shaped position is the shape of the Hebrew letter "shin," which is the representative letter of the word "Shaddai," a term for God, and is a gesture traditionally used by the Kohanim (Hebrew "priests"), Jews of priestly descent, during a blessing ceremony. It’s also the first letter of "Shalom," the Jewish word for hello, goodbye, and peace.

The "Vulcan salute" (🖖) earned emoji status in 2014. Usually accompanied by the utterance, "Live long and prosper," it's not so distant a cousin of shalom.

Thanks to attorney, and my long-ago TA, Kevin Hart for being the first to wish me a happy First Contact Day, and to my friend Professor Robert Steinbuch for reminding me of the Vulcan salute's Jewish heritage.

Chag Pesach sameach, and happy First Contact Day.

'Civility' is code for conformity

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court two weeks ago struck down a town policy purporting to require civility in public meetings. The town policy resembles attempts to restrict academic freedom.

Board meeting, via Southborough Access Media video
(Kolenda at center).

'Civility' in Politics

In December 2018, Southborough, Massachusetts, resident Louise Barron took advantage of a public comment period at a town board meeting to call out board members on fiscal policy and, ironically, compliance with state open meetings law. Though not obliged to, board members responded. The discussion became heated, resulting in Barron calling one selectman, Daniel Kolenda, "a Hitler," and Kolenda abruptly ending the comment period and expelling Barron. (The meeting is on YouTube (cued). Read more at Wicked Local.)

Board policy provides for an open public comment period for extra-agenda items with this admonition:

All remarks and dialogue in public meetings must be respectful and courteous, free of rude, personal or slanderous remarks. Inappropriate language and/or shouting will not be tolerated. Furthermore, no person may offer comment without permission of the [c]hair, and all persons shall, at the request of the [c]hair, be silent. No person shall disrupt the proceedings of a meeting.

Barron challenged the policy and her expulsion under the freedom of assembly and freedom of speech provisions of the 1780 Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, articles 19 and 16, respectively. Barron forewent challenge under the younger (1791) First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to keep the case in state court. 

And just as well. The Massachusetts Declaration is a revered document in its own right in American history and global human rights, and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has not hesitated to construe its provisions as more protective of civil rights than the federal standard. Indeed, for many years, well before I came to work in Massachusetts, I taught a public seminar on the First Amendment for the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas and used the Massachusetts Declaration to demonstrate the close connection of FOI and assembly.

Article 19 provides, "The people have a right, in an orderly and peaceable manner, to assemble to consult upon the common good; give instructions to their representatives, and to request of the legislative body, by the way of addresses, petitions, or remonstrances, redress of the wrongs done them, and of the grievances they suffer."

In teaching freedom of information law, I often shorthand the constitutional context of access law as the "flip side of the coin" of the First Amendment. The idea is that the freedom of speech is meaningless, especially in the core protection of political expression, if one does not know the facts to speak about.

The coin characterization is useful, but it's not entirely accurate. The First Amendment recognition of assembly as ancillary to expression aptly indicates an interrelationship that is more an intertwining than a duality.

Board meeting, via Southborough Access Media video
(Barron at right).

In the opinion of the court, Justice Scott L. Kafker recounted Article 19's "illustrious" history.

The provision also has a distinct, identifiable history and a close connection to public participation in town government that is uniquely informative in this case. ... [Article] 19 reflects the lessons and the spirit of the American Revolution. The assembly provision arose out of fierce opposition to governmental authority, and it was designed to protect such opposition, even if it was rude, personal, and disrespectful to public figures, as the colonists eventually were to the king and his representatives in Massachusetts.

Our interpretation of the text, history, and purpose of art. 19 is further informed by the words and actions of Samuel and John Adams, who not only theorized and commented upon the right, but were historic actors well versed in its application during the revolutionary period, particularly in the towns. Both Adams cousins emphasized in their correspondence and their actions the importance of the right to assemble.... Samuel Adams wielded it to great effect in his attempt to "procure a Redress of Grievances" when the British governor of the colony attempted to exercise control over assemblies after the Boston Massacre.... 

More philosophically, John Adams explained that the right of assembly was a most important principle and institution of self-government, as it allowed "[every] Man, high and low ... [to speak his senti]ments of public Affairs.".... Town inhabitants, he wrote, "are invested with ... the right to assemble, whenever they are summoned by their selectmen, in their town halls, there to deliberate upon the public affairs of the town." .... "The consequences" of the right of assembly, in Adams's words, were that "the inhabitants ... acquired ... the habit of discussing, of deliberating, and of judging of public affairs," and thus, "it was in these assemblies of towns ... that the sentiments of the people were formed ... and their resolutions were taken from the beginning to the end of the disputes ... with Great Britain." .... Alexis de Tocqueville made a similar point in Democracy in America: "Town-meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people's reach, they teach men how to use and how to enjoy it." ....

Cousins Samuel Adams and John Adams
(via JohnAdamsInfo.com)

The court had little difficulty concluding that the town policy thus ran afoul of article 19. 

There was nothing respectful or courteous about the public assemblies of the revolutionary period. There was also much that was rude and personal, especially when it was directed at the representatives of the king and the king himself.

The court furthermore held the town policy overbroad and vague in violation of the article 16 freedom of speech. The case did not require the court to determine whether the First Amendment public forum doctrine applies to article 16 problems, the opinion explained. Massachusetts precedents already establish that content-based restrictions of political speech are subject to strict scrutiny. Worse, the court reasoned, the policy is viewpoint based, as it allows "polite[] praise[]" of public officials while condemning "rude[] or disrespectful[] critici[sm]."

Well reasoned as it is, the decision in Barron v. Kolenda, No. SJC-13284 (Mar. 7, 2023), does not break new ground in freedom of speech, even in Massachusetts law. And the case has been well reported with commentary, for example by J.D. Tuccille for Reason ("Let Massholes Be Massholes, Says Bay State's High Court"), and by Pioneer Legal, The New York Times, and the Brennan Center. What enticed me to write about the case is the likeness of the civility code to efforts to extinguish academic freedom.

'Civility' in the Workplace

The go-to code word on American college campuses to curb faculty freedom has been "collegiality." Introducing a 2016 report, the AAUP explained:

In recent years, Committee A has become aware of an increasing tendency on the part not only of administrations and governing boards but also of faculty members serving in such roles as department chairs or as members of promotion and tenure committees to add a fourth criterion in faculty evaluation: "collegiality." For the reasons set forth in this statement, we view this development as highly unfortunate, and we believe that it should be discouraged....

.... Historically, "collegiality" has not infrequently been associated with ensuring homogeneity and hence with practices that exclude persons on the basis of their difference from a perceived norm. The invocation of "collegiality" may also threaten academic freedom. In the heat of important decisions regarding promotion or tenure, as well as other matters involving such traditional areas of faculty responsibility as curriculum or academic hiring, collegiality may be confused with the expectation that a faculty member display "enthusiasm" or "dedication," evince "a constructive attitude" that will "foster harmony," or display an excessive deference to administrative or faculty decisions where these may require reasoned discussion. Such expectations are flatly contrary to elementary principles of academic freedom, which protect a faculty member’s right to dissent from the judgments of colleagues and administrators.

I witnessed this problem in action in those "recent years." "Collegiality" as an excuse to demand conformity was key in prompting me to write and speak in 2009 and 2010 about the importance of what I termed "penumbral academic freedom." 

Are you part of "the team" at work?
(Rawpixel Ltd via Flickr CC BY 2.0)

The problem has only worsened. In fact, I see the "collegiality" expectation as a piece of the broader problem of corporate ideology that insists on everyone being a "team player." That's the coded language designed to alienate workers who hesitate to take on extra duties or to give up personal time without fair compensation. Too long in coming, the "quiet quitting" movement is a direct response to this self-serving worldview.

Though "team speak" is not a specially academic problem, the ever more corporatized public university embraces the jargon. Routinely, I hear my work for a public entity described as "public service." The characterization is invariably paired with a demand that I take on some additional responsibility with no more, if not with less, compensation, and certainly with less compensation than a similarly skilled colleague at a private institution.

The rhetoric is exhausting. I'm not on your "team." The faculty is not my football side. The office is not my church. The institutional "mission" is not my creed. Rather, I do a job. I get paid for the job. Quid pro quo. Often, I enjoy my work, and sometimes, I'm good at it. But it's work. Then (even when the switch is merely virtual) I go home. Where I don't work for anyone else. Where I have a family and a life. Where I hope to win the lottery and quit my job.

That arrangement should be a source of pride, not shame. A public institution performing a public service is no less laudable because its staff is paid rather than volunteer. When administrators, especially handsomely compensated deans and chancellors, break out the "public service" rhetoric, hat in hand, I want to ask why they cash their paychecks, if they're so committed to "public service."

Just as I digested the court's Barron decision and commentary last week, Professor Robert Steinbuch, a (genuinely collegial) colleague at another public law school, told me about a proposed amendment to his school's selection criteria for distinguished professorships. 

Apparently, there was dissatisfaction by some faculty, I assume for the very reasons the AAUP warned, that "collegiality" was an express factor in the assessment. Thus, the law school faculty development committee proposed changes including the following (red-ink deletions and additions as in original).

In awarding named professorships, the Dean shall consider criteria in addition to a candidate's meritorious work in their particular field, including but not limited to donor specifications associated with the title, the overall mission of the law school, and continued excellence in scholarship, teaching, service, civility, and respect and collegiality as outlined in the Bowen Faculty Handbook, and established University policy, or the Association of American Law Schools Best Practices.

....

III. SERVICE & COLLEGIALITY

....

In the space provided below, please describe any additional information you wish to provide reflecting exemplary service rendered in the spirit of civility, respect collegiality and collaboration at the law school and the university level and wider recognition at the national or international level.

....

Self-Assessment: Using the categories of scholarship, teaching, service, civility, and respect and collegiality in this Application, in the space provided below, please provide a candid assessment of how you would represent this Named Professorship while you held the award.

I suppose that any candidate selected for a distinguished professorship at this public law school, like anyone commenting on the performance of public officials in Southborough, Massachusetts, before Barron, "must be respectful and courteous" and refrain from the "rude" and "personal." Faculty governance is all well and good, as long as no one is offended.

Let the revolution be quelled.

FOI seminar shines light on transparency research

In fall 2022, students in my freedom-of-information (FOI) law seminar produced another range of compelling research papers in which they inquired into hot issues in the law of access to government.

It's been my privilege to teach a law school seminar in FOI since 2004. For other teachers who might like to include FOI in the higher ed curriculum, my 2012 casebook and companion teaching notes are now available in full on my SSRN page. Please contact me if my contemporary syllabus or other materials can be of help. I teach the law of access broadly, from state law to federal, and in all branches of government. Students moreover are encouraged to pursue research projects in any vein of transparency and accountability, including access to the private sector, which has been a focus in my research, too.

In fall 2022, my students had the fabulous opportunity to participate contemporaneously in the online National FOI Summit of the National Freedom of Information Coalition (NFOIC).  I'm grateful to NFOIC President David Cuillier and Summit Organizer Erika Benton for making our participation possible.

My fall class was joined by a number of guest speakers who vastly enhanced students' exposure to FOI law, research, and practice. I am especially grateful to Professor Alasdair Roberts, UMass Amherst, who joined us live to talk about all things FOI, from his classic book Blacked Out (Cambridge 2012) to the implications for transparency and accountability of the research in his latest book, Superstates (Wiley 2022).

I thank Professor Robert Steinbuch, Arkansas Little Rock, who joined us to discuss his tireless work as an advocate in the legislature for transparency. He now writes powerfully about transparency and accountability as a regular columnist for The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and he is author of the treatise, The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (LexisNexis 8th ed. 2022). I thank Professor Margaret Kwoka, Ohio State, who took time away from her ongoing FOI research in Mexico to join us to talk about that work and her recent book, Saving the Freedom of Information Act (Cambridge 2021).

I also thank attorney Alyssa Petroff and current law student Megan Winkeler, who joined us via Zoom to talk about their FOI research.  An alumna of my FOI seminar (as well as Comparative Law) and now a judicial law clerk for the Maine Supreme Court, Petroff discussed her recent article in The Journal of Civic Information on access to information about private prisons in Arizona.  An alumna of my 1L Torts classes, Winkeler has four years' experience in negotiation and mediation training and currently is researching negotiated rule-making in administrative law.

Here are the students' ambitious projects.

Madison Boudreau, The Benefits and Drawbacks of Reform Targeting Police Misconduct. The movement to increase public access to police misconduct and disciplinary records has proven to be a beneficial and necessary step toward heightened transparency and accountability of police departments and officers. However, states that have taken strides to open up access to these records continue to grapple with the ongoing barriers to public access despite their efforts. States seeking to implement similar changes to their open records laws will benefit by remaining aware of potential drawbacks to access despite reform. In the absence of impactful reform that effectively mandates the disclosure of these records, police departments have shown to prefer to remain under a cover of darkness, their internal personnel procedures left unchecked. As a result, the cycle of police secrecy is bound to viciously repeat itself.

Aaron Druyvestein, The Rise of Vexatious Requester Laws: Useful Regulation or Evasive Government Practice? The concept of freedom of information allows anyone to request any agency record for any reason, a model that has been replicated around the world and celebrated as a necessity for promoting democracy. The underlying goals of FOI to promote accountability are contingent on the government providing a strong and efficient FOI system. However, with the dramatic increase in FOI requests in the country, brought about in large part by better utilization of technology in FOI processes, there has been an increase in the burden on administrative agencies as a result of excessive, repetitive, or vindictive FOIA requests. Since 2010, governments' responses to these burdensome requests have resulted in the creation of so-called vexatious requester laws, which are intended to mitigate the effect of these requests on agencies.

Critics of vexatious requester laws argue that the laws are nothing more than a feeble attempt by the government to undermine otherwise valid records requests under the guise of improving government efficiency and reducing requester harassment. Concerns have been expressed that the laws' reliance on ambiguous terminology such as "vexatiousness" will give agencies discretion to deny requests based on subjective and unverifiable agency determinations of the requester's intent or motives for requesting. This paper analyzes the rise and application of vexatious requester laws as seen in the three states—Illinois, Connecticut, and Kentucky—that have passed statutory provisions permitting administrative agencies to deny requests to vexatious requesters. In addition, this paper investigates the policy implications of such laws on the broader FOIA system.

Alise Greco, Read It Before You Eat It: An Explicatory Review of the 2016 Nutrition Facts Label and Balancing FDA Transparency with Consumer Comprehension and the Food Industry. As the nation recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is difficult to ignore how drastically the American lifestyle has changed, especially with regard to diet and exercise. The Nutrition Facts Label (NFL), largely meant to influence and assist consumer decision-making for food and beverages, was last updated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2016. This paper explains the 2016 NFL regulation in greater detail in light of a current need by many Americans to make informed, healthier choices based on science rather than social media or misleading, corporate-designed packaging. The FDA is put under the microscope and evaluated on its ability to balance the needs of consumers to be provided transparent, useful information and the demands from industry to make a profit.

Nicholas Hansen, Only Those Who Count The Vote Matter: A Comparative Examination of Arizona and Federal Transparency Regulations Pertaining to Election Data and Procedure and Their Impact on Citizen Confidence in Democracy. This analysis details the protections afforded under the state of Arizona’s election data exemptions under both the Arizona Open Meetings Act and the Arizona Open Records Act, and provides comparisons to the protections afforded under similar exemptions provided at the federal level. Characterizations of the election data and procedural protections for both levels of government are offered, and examinations of what information is permitted for provision under FOIA requests substantiate these characterizations. This analysis proceeds with an understanding that examinations must be confined to information that is both the subject of and relevant to either historical or ongoing FOIA requests, rather than the information made available to the public through the procedures associated with courtroom disclosures. 

This author posits that Arizona’s trend toward enforcing relative transparency when courts are compelled to examine the efficacy and validity of local election procedures might serve as a model for states whose courts are less inclined toward making such information available to the public at large. Recent lawsuits, including those associated with the largely settled controversies alleged pertaining to the 2020 Presidential election, and those suits pertaining to the use of Dominion Voting System’s voting machines substantiate this advocacy.

This analysis concludes with a determination as to whether or not Arizona’s FOIA exemptions as they pertain to election data and procedural information inspire greater public confidence than those utilized at the federal level. Also offered are policy recommendations as to how the Arizona judiciary might be able to better handle future election data and procedural controversies by utilizing the already extant tools within the FOIA rules, as well as policy recommendations for legislative reform in other states and the federal level, should local legislators and Congress see fit to implement a more transparent, more accessible system of legal procedures to deal with future election controversies.

Mitchell Johnson, Transparency and Tragedy: How the Texas Public Information Act is Being Weaponized After Uvalde, Yet Can Be Used for Good. This comment examines the Texas "law enforcement exception" under the Texas Public Information Act (PIA) regarding the mandamus lawsuit that several media outlets filed to obtain records from the Department of Public Safety (DPS) after the Robb Elementary shooting on May 24, 2022. The paper focused on the DPS, and not on another law enforcement agency at the scene of the shooting on May 24, because of the actions of Colonel Steven McCraw. Colonel McCraw, the highest ranking official in the DPS, has provided inconsistent accounts to the public of what occurred on May 24. This comment also examines the specific exceptions that the DPS claims. The DPS claims that the records that are sought for disclosure are either (1) records relating to an active investigation, or (2) records that relate to the purposes of law enforcement. The DPS’s current utilization of these exceptions is not grounded in law. No criminal investigation is taking place because the shooter is deceased. Furthermore, while Colonel McCraw has stated that his agency is reviewing his troopers’ and rangers’ actions to determine whether there should be a referral to prosecutors, criminal charges might be futile because of governmental immunity. Also, many of the records requested pertain to "basic information" of a crime that must be disclosed under the PIA. Last, the comment proposes that the PIA should be amended to incorporate case law and create a "criminality showing" if a law enforcement agency wishes to withhold documents under an active investigation exception.

Ashley Martinez-Sanchez, The New Jersey Open Public Records Act and the Public Interest in a Narrow Statutory Interpretation of the "Criminal Investigatory" Exemption. The New Jersey Open Public Records Act (OPRA) expresses a strong public policy in favor of open and transparent government. OPRA champions the idea of a citizen's right of access to government records to ensure an informed public. However, transparency is not absolute. The OPRA permits secrecy for ongoing law enforcement investigations.  Courts should narrowly read the "criminal investigatory" exemption. This paper analyzes the evolution of the exemption over the years. It further examines what the future looks like for it in the legislative and judicial context.  I reference New Jersey case law and recent events in the state to contextualize the importance of narrowly reading the exemption. Inversely, the paper suggests that a narrow interpretation of the exemption not only would impede transparency efforts, but would raise civil rights concerns, particularly for marginalized and vulnerable communities in New Jersey. 

Marikate Reese, Police Accountability: Does it Really Exist? This paper demonstrates the power of police unions, and their contracts, in limiting accountability, transparency, and access.  The contracts are the catalyst to shielding officers from disciplinary actions, limiting civilian oversight, and restricting access to misconduct records. While states, such as New York, have become more transparent with their records, the unions still dictate a large part of police procedure.  This procedure includes, but is not limited to, delay of officer interrogations, obstructing investigations of misconduct, and destroying disciplinary records.  The procedures are safeguards put in place by collective bargaining practices, law enforcement bills of rights, and civil labor law protections.  The overall purpose of these safeguards is to establish rights, protections, and provisions for law enforcement officers including the arbitration process, training standards, and process of investigation. This paper provides a brief coverage of the protections afforded by collective bargaining, police bills of rights, and civil labor laws that stand in the way of the public transparency barriers and racial injustice.  Furthermore, this paper addresses how these procedural protections limit accountability while taking a look at the existing laws among various states.  This paper suggests several ways states have made strides for accountability and what limitations might arise as a result.

James Stark, What's the Deal with Doxing? Doxing is an entropic issue plaguing today’s society. Defining what it means to be “doxed” has been a problem that’s compounded by the fact that not all forms of doxing are equal. Some play a useful role in public discourse, while other forms of doxing enable harassment of private citizens. The current anti-doxing laws can be summed up in three categories. First are the “incidentals,” which tend be older laws that just incidentally happen to address doxing in some way due to the language used. The second category is “Daniel’s Law,” which is a law that has picked up traction for trying to protect public officials from doxing and its harms. Lastly are the “general” statutes, which were crafted to specifically fight doxing in general and protect as many people as possible from doxing. In order to properly combat doxing, legislatures need to agree that doxing is the unwanted release of personal or identifying information about an individual as a form of punishment or revenge, and that it can affect anyone, in government or not. The legislatures must focus on creating “general” statutes, and tailor the laws to protect the individuals, while allowing discourse around public officials. A poorly written anti-doxing law will result in either censorship or inadequate protection of individual Americans.

Marco Verch Professional Photographer via Flickr CC BY 2.0

Chad Tworek, Public But Private Athletic Departments. This paper address the Florida state policy that allows public universities to designate their athletic departments as private, thus evading the records requests for which compliance is required for any other public agency. In Florida, there are athletic departments at public universities that are private. While they are not funded by the university, they still act as an agent of the university and are afforded the same protections as public universities. If anyone is to sue these departments and seek to claim damages, there is a statutory cap on damages, $200,000. The cap pertains because courts find them to be mere components of the public entities they serve. Yet protection from public records requests allows these departments to accumulate money in secret and to spend without accountability. Such organization of athletic departments is moreover occurring elsewhere in the United States. The impact is to keep the public in the dark about how these arms of government do business.

Judge chides attorney for not wearing coat

An Arkansas Supreme Court justice earlier this month called out a professor-attorney for not wearing a coat in a Zoom argument.

Associate Justice Courtney Rae Hudson took to task attorney and Professor Robert Steinbuch, Arkansas Little Rock, my colleague and past co-author on freedom-of-information works (book, essay), first, for not wearing a coat over his button-down shirt in the Zoom argument on February 2, and then for not having asked advance permission to use a demonstrative exhibit. She had the court and counsel wait painfully while Steinbuch and his attorney-client fetched coats.

Steinbuch probably should've worn a coat. He told Justice Hudson he had not because it interfered with his handling of the exhibit, a statutory text, within the small space of the camera view. Good excuse, bad excuse; either way, Justice Hudson's handling of the matter was condescending and, coming as it did after Steinbuch's argument, felt more personal than professional. My impression as a viewer was that Hudson was the one who came off looking worse for the exchange.

Being an aggressive advocate for transparency and accountability in Arkansas, Steinbuch has many allies in mass media, and they were not as gentlemanly about what went down as Steinbuch was. The aptly named Snarky Media Report made a YouTube video highlighting the exchange.  As Snarky told it, "Justice Hudson pulled out her Karen Card." Snarky also observed, with captured image in evidence, that "[s]everal times during the hearing Hudson appeared to be spitting into a cup."

More seriously, Snarky took the occasion to highlight past instances in which Hudson's ethics were called into question. Hudson (formerly Goodson), who was elected to the court in 2010, and her now ex-husband, a class action attorney, took two vacations abroad, valued together at $62,000, at the expense of Arkansas litigator W.H. Taylor (Legal Newsline). Hudson did report the gifts, and she said she would recuse from any case in which Taylor was involved.

Very well, but my suspicions of bias run a bit deeper. Hudson's vacation-mate ex, John Goodson, is chairman of the board of the University of Arkansas. (Correction, May 9, 2023: I'm told that Goodson ended his service on the board a year or so ago; I've not been able to ascertain the date.) One of Steinbuch's tireless transparency causes has been for Arkansas Freedom of Information Act access to the foundation funding of the university system in Arkansas, especially the flagship University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Indeed, Steinbuch wrote just last week (and on January 29), in his weekly column for The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, about that very issue in connection with secret spending at Arkansas State University. University System counsel have fought ferociously and successfully for decades to stop any lawsuit or legislative bill that would open foundation books to public scrutiny.

Goodson also has what the Democrat-Gazette characterized in 2019 as "deep political and legal connections around the state" with disgraced former state Senator Jeremy Hutchinson. Hutchinson is a nemesis of former Arkansas politician Dan Greenberg (a longtime friend of mine). After Greenberg lost the senate race to Hutchinson in 2010, Greenberg sued a local newspaper, alleging a deliberate campaign of misinformation. Steinbuch supported Greenberg in the suit. Though Greenberg was unable to demonstrate actual malice to the satisfaction of the courts, discovery in the suit revealed a problematically cozy relationship between the newspaper editor and Hutchinson.

The day after the oral argument in Steinbuch's case, Hutchinson was sentenced to 46 months in prison on federal charges of bribery and tax fraud—ironic, given that a false report of ethical misconduct was a rumor that Hutchinson had sewn about Greenberg in 2010. 

I don't know; maybe Justice Hudson just gets really hung up on men's attire.  She does hail from a conservative corner of Arkansas.

But a wise friend once told me, "Nothing in Arkansas happens for the reason you think it happens."

The case is Corbitt v. Pulaski County Jail, No. CV-22-204 (Ark. oral arg. Feb. 2, 2023).

Rob Steinbuch, law prof, for Arkansas House

UPDATE, June 26: I'm sorry to report that Professor Steinbuch did not prevail in the primary. But wow did he come close with 46.5% of the vote, 1,758 votes to Jon Wickliffe's 2,206. That leaves Wickliffe with some discontented voters to win over, and I'm sure Steinbuch will hold his feet to the fire.

Rob Steinbuch, a law professor and advocate for civil rights and transparency, is running for office, and he has my full-throated support (in my personal capacity*).

A friend, colleague, and co-author, Professor Steinbuch is running to represent Arkansas House District 73, which extends west from the state capital of Little Rock.

Professor Steinbuch has a campaign website that lists his top priorities: "Safety and Security," "Small Government," and "Life, Liberty, & Freedom."  The website is loaded with videos in which Steinbuch talks about a range of issues; three videos tackle transparency and accountability directly.  And there is a blog, in which he has held incumbent officials' feet to the fire.

When I left Arkansas for employment in Massachusetts in 2011, Steinbuch took over, rekindled, and then substantially grew my investment in transparency in the state.  He joined Professor John Watkins and me as co-author of the treatise, The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, for its sixth edition in 2017.  And with Professor Watkins now retired and my having moved on, Steinbuch has continued the project and secured a publisher going forward.

More importantly, Steinbuch became a fixture at the Arkansas Capitol in the 2010s, testifying relentlessly in the cause of transparency and unofficially advising legislators.  He transformed transparency advocacy from the defensive and reactionary posture, which local media long had maintained, into affirmative advocacy for reform on key issues, such as attorney fee awards for successful record requesters.

Steinbuch's commitment to transparency is among the qualities that make him a superior candidate for public office.  You don't have to agree with Steinbuch on everything—he and I agree on many things, and we disagree, too—but you will never lack for knowing where he stands.  Any day, I would choose consistency and honest integrity for my representation, even in someone with whom I sometimes disagree, over the run-of-the-mill politician who bends to the special interest or politically correct fashion of the day.  Say what you will about Steinbuch, he will never be bought, and he never pulls his punches.

You too can support Steinbuch to prevail over the well moneyed special interests by donating at Steinbuch for Arkansas.

*As always, this blog is a product of my personal creation, even if it sometimes serves also to fulfill my responsibilities as an academic in teaching, service, and research, and as an attorney in the Bar of the District of Columbia.  The Savory Tort is neither affiliated with nor within the editorial control of my employer, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.  I produced this posting, "Rob Steinbuch, law prof, for Arkansas House," on personal time and with no public resources.

Legal educators tussle over politics in faculty honors

For persons interested in the ongoing tumult at the University of Arkansas Little Rock Law School over the renaming of a professorship after President Bill Clinton (e.g., TaxProf Blog, Wash. Times, Ark. Dem.-Gaz. (subscription)), apparently without faculty approval and with dubious official imprimatur, an August 19 legislative hearing on the matter is online on video.  On the Agenda tab, cue item F, at 2:06:39.

Citing, inter alia, named professorships awarded upon "cronyism" rather than merit, a police officer-student barred from open-carrying on campus in uniform until the legislature enacted a remedial statute, and refusal to permit a political conservative to teach constitutional law, Professor Robert Steinbuch concluded:

It saddens me to say but the law school is no longer an environment for unbiased legal education.  It's a hot bed of crypto leftist wokism unwittingly funded by the great people of this state being used by a select few who pocket a drastically disproportionate share of the resources to pursue their political agendas.

Dean Theresa Beiner testified that the law school decided after 20 years to honor the wishes of the donor who funded the professorship, and then, apparently, did so erroneously.  When a newspaper columnist asked for pertinent records under the state Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the law school discovered that Clinton had "withdrawn" permission amid the investigation of his conduct in the Lewinsky affair.

Three cheers for the Arkansas FOIA.  Full disclosure: I was a co-author with Professor Steinbuch and University of Arkansas Law School Professor Emeritus John J. Watkins of the sixth edition of the treatise, The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act. 

A cheer more for the legislator in the hearing who probed the process for awarding named professorships and compelled the dean's admission that the selection occurs substantially in secret under the statutory personnel exemption.  My recollection of the selection process for named professorships at that law school many years ago accords with Professor Steinbuch's more recent experience.  When I worked there, one professor—the same one who raised a red flag over the "Clinton" name—was stripped of his named professorship when he fell out of favor.  A past dean represented that the professorship here at issue had to be awarded to one professor—the one who kicked off the present controversy by using the "Clinton" name—because of the donor's intent, rather than merit, a contention unsupported by the donor.

At the same time, my experience as a law professor suggests that very little in the American workplace works on merit anyway, legal education and the work experiences of my law students informing my conclusion.  The dean's insistence to the contrary is quaint and typical of persons in power, whatever their politics.

The fireworks show (item F) runs about 48 minutes.  The referenced exhibit, a letter from the university chancellor to the committee, is available online.

Law profs fault vague, empty ABA 'diversity' proposal

Gan Khoon Lay CC BY 3.0

The accreditation of law schools by the American Bar Association would be a joke if it were more funny than costly.

Having been a leader in the push to attain accreditation for the law school where I work presently, I know firsthand the enormous and unnecessary costs that the ABA visits upon law schools—and therefore law students—that strive to become part of the club.  Some years ago, I was invited to write up my observations on the accreditation farce for a book.  I declined to do so because my school did not yet have full accreditation, and I feared putting it in jeopardy.  I'm not sure I made the right choice.  Now that I'm in the club (again), I admit, I feel unmotivated to expose its flaws.

There is a place for academic accreditation.  A functional accreditation system would protect academic freedom from administrative overreach or political intervention; would protect resources vital to students and faculty, such as law library budgets and staffing, from bean counters' incessant cuts; and would protect students in their investment against fraud and unduly burdensome student debt.  Every now and then, the ABA stumbles into accomplishing one of these objectives, usually after having failed to do so resulted in public embarrassment.  Meanwhile, outside watchdogs with no real power at all—the AAUP, FIRE, media such as Inside Higher Ed and US News, and faculty blogs such as TaxProf and ATL—accomplish much more every day to keep law schools honest, and they don't pass fat tabs on to law students or lawyers.

When I have troubled to raise a red flag or blow the whistle on bad behavior in law schools to the ABA, my concerns have been consistently, efficiently, and quietly buried by accreditation review committees.  I've come to understand that the number-one benefit of club membership is that a school's soiled skivvies will be laundered in secrecy.  ABA accreditation is not about transparency and not about truth.

So what is ABA accreditation about?  Appearances.  Accreditation is about looking woke.  And to that end, the ABA wields its accreditation power as a virtue-signaling manifesto.  Too many times, for too many years, I have seen law schools pursue feel-good social agendas, with ABA imprimatur, and it's students, ironically often students of color, who pay the price for the reality that the agenda is mere facade.

So it is with the ABA's latest inclination to prescribe "diversity."  I put that term in quote marks, because the ABA is not worried about all kinds of law school diversity, but only the kinds that resonate in the correct political frequencies; the kind of diversity that prompted a colleague of mine in a recent hiring meeting to say "we don't need more white," drawing applause.

(I do believe we would benefit from greater racial diversity on our faculty, and in legal academics generally.  Where I differ with my colleagues is over the propriety of overt race discrimination as the means to the end.  Dare I suggest it, one might actually have to invest money in creating opportunity.  The problem is akin to employers complaining they're unable to hire while being unwilling to offer attractive terms of employment.)

With Professors Rick Sander and Eugene Volokh at UCLA, and Professor Rob Steinbuch at UALR, I offered comment (TaxProf Blog, Volokh Conspiracy) this week on a recently ABA-proposed "diversity" standard, Standard 206, in parts.  All of the views above are mine, and not necessarily those of my co-authors.  Those views explain my trepidation about the proposed standard, justifying my participation in the comment below, which is ours together.

June 27, 2021

Via email to Mr. Fernando Mariduena

Dear Chief Justice Bales and Mr. Adams:

Last month, the ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar approved for Notice and Comment proposed revisions to Standards 205, 206, 303, 507, and 508 of the ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools. The revisions to Rule 206 would significantly alter the responsibilities of law schools to achieve “diverse” and “equitable” environments. In response to your solicitation of comments, we offer the following:

(1) The proposed Rule 206(b) provides that “a law school shall take effective actions that, in their totality, demonstrate progress in diversifying the student body, faculty, and staff….”   There appear to be no exceptions, indicating that the language requires that all law schools must demonstrate progress. “Diversifying,” to judge from the annotations to the rule, means “adding people of color” (not “minorities,” which the annotations say is an outdated term). Yet “progress” is nowhere defined; indeed, there is not even a hint of what it means to fully satisfy this standard. According to the ABA’s own website, which reports the proportion of first-year law students in 2020-21 who are “minorities” (we assume this means “people of color”), the makeup of the 197 ABA-accredited law schools ranges from 8% “minority” to 100% “minority.”(FN1) According to the ABA data, minorities make up more than 90% of students at four schools, and more than half the students at 24 schools. Presumably, these schools are also mandated to achieve greater diversity; does that mean they must find ways to enroll more whites? If there is an implicit goal, is it the same nationwide, or does it depend on the demographics of a school’s region? Any useful effort to create usable guidance to law schools must, at a minimum, address these and other similar questions. The standard, as written, is so vague that it will give enormous discretion to ABA accreditation committees to exert arbitrary control over important and sensitive policy issues.

The proposal fails to account for the fact that among the current population of law school applicants, there are very large disparities in credentials that correlate with race. For example, among all students taking the LSAT, there is about a 1.0 standard deviation gap between the mean score of white takers and the mean score of black takers. The white-black gap in college grades is smaller but still very large (about 0.8 standard deviations).(FN2: The Law School Admissions Council releases annual data on the scores and GPAs of law school applicants in its National Statistical Report series.) It is difficult to argue that either of these credentials is discriminatory, since they are predictive of law school grades and subsequent bar performance, and their predictions are as valid for blacks as for whites. Indeed, to the extent there is a debate over the relationship between black credentials and black law school performance, it is whether LSAT scores and college grades overpredict law school performance.(FN3:  LSAT and UGPA “overpredict” GPA performance of a particular group in law school, that implies that students in that group will obtain lower grades than their credentials predict, and thus that the credential is biased in their favor. The LSAC itself, in its validity studies, finds “very slight” overprediction of black GPAs; Sander finds that when adjustment is made for school quality and within-school grade inflation, LSAT and GPA are unbiased predictors of law school GPA across racial lines; Alexia Marks and Scott Moss, in a study of GPAs at two schools, find LSAT and UGPA modestly overpredictive of black GPAs. See Anthony & Liu; Sander; Marks & Moss.) The large credential gap means, of course, that law schools have resorted to large racial preferences as the main method of increasing the numbers of enrolled blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians. The best data we have on this come from admission records released in 2007-08 by 41 public law schools in the U.S., which in the aggregate show that roughly 60% of blacks entering these law schools had academic credentials that were at least a standard deviation below those of their median classmate.(FN4) (This was also true for about 30% of Hispanic first-years, compared to about 6% of Asian-American students and 4% of whites.) A major failing of the proposed Rule, therefore, is that since it provides no guidance on how the existing pool of law school applicants can be meaningfully expanded, it necessarily implies that greater “diversity” should be achieved by using even more aggressive racial preferences.

(2) The proposed Interpretation 206-2 asserts that “the enrollment of a diverse student body has been proven to improve the quality of the educational environment for all students” but cites no evidence to this effect. So far as we are aware, no one has even attempted to study, in a scientifically credible way, the effect of diversity on legal education quality or outcomes. Careful studies have been done at the undergraduate level, but these studies come to very different conclusions. Importantly, the leading studies that find positive educational benefits from diversity (notably, those by Patricia Gurin and her colleagues(FN5: See, e.g., Gurin et al.; Gurin et al.)) do not take into account how those benefits are affected when schools use large racial preferences to achieve diversity (as nearly all law schools do). The research that does take large preferences into account (such as the work of Arcidiacono et al. at Duke,(FN6: See, e.g., Arcidiacono et al.) or the work of Carrell et al. at the Air Force Academy(FN7)) finds that large preferences can directly undermine the goals of a diverse environment and increase racial segregation and isolation. There is also, of course, the very real danger that if race correlates very highly with class performance—an outcome difficult if not impossible to avoid if large racial preferences are used—then the single-minded pursuit of diversity will create, rather than erode, racial stereotypes.

(3) The proposed Rule and accompanying interpretations conspicuously ignore the likelihood of “mismatch”—that is, the potential harmful effects of very large preferences upon the intended beneficiaries (in terms of law school grades, bar passage, and long-term outcomes). In 2007, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a lengthy report on law school mismatch, finding grave cause for concern and urging further investigation,(FN8) but the ABA has never taken up this question. This inaction persists despite the fact that the Journal of Legal Education recently accepted for publication a new empirical study showing compelling evidence that law school mismatch has large, negative effects upon bar passage.(FN9) There is heavy attrition of students admitted with large preferences, first in terms of graduation from law school and second in terms of passing state bar exams, and this is at least arguably the major reason the legal profession remains as predominantly white as it still is. The committee’s proposal not only ignores this fundamental problem, but creates pressure on schools to worsen it.

(4) Finally, the proposed Interpretation 206-1 states that “The requirement of a constitutional provision or statute that purports to prohibit consideration of race, color, ethnicity … in admissions or employment decisions is not a justification for a school’s non-compliance with Standard 206 …. [Such a school must] demonstrate the effective actions and progress required by Standard 206 by means other than those prohibited by the applicable constitutional or statutory provisions.” Setting aside the problem noted earlier—that “effective actions and progress” are nowhere defined—the predominant method that schools have used to increase the number of enrolling members of underrepresented racial groups is the use of ever-larger admissions preferences. Case law in the states that have prohibited the use of race- based preferences makes clear—not surprisingly—that such preferences do, in fact, violate the law. In the absence of any explanation or documentation of other, proven methods by which schools can make “progress,” the proposed standard places these schools in an impossible bind—violate the law and the civil rights of applicants, or risk losing accreditation. Putting schools in this impossible bind would be an abuse of the ABA’s professional responsibility as an accreditor.

We welcome the opportunity to share with the Committee and the ABA any of the research discussed in this letter, and to otherwise contribute to a constructive revision of the proposed rules.

Sincerely, ....

I ask of this comment letter only that it bid salutation to my many criticisms of the ABA over the years when joining them in the ABA's dustbin.

[UPDATE, Aug. 18.]  The ABA approved the proposed standards.  See yesterday's TaxProf Blog.

Legal scholars overlook scholarship about state FOIA, but dedicated academics toil for state transparency

Professor Robert Steinbuch and I aim to draw attention to the undersung work of state-law transparency  scholars through our recent publication in the Rutgers Law Record.  Here is the introductory paragraph.

We have read with interest Christina Koningisor’s publication, Transparency Deserts. While there is much to be lauded in the work – all access advocates would like to see more scholarship and publicity about the importance of transparency and accountability – we are disheartened by the article’s failure to recognize the extant vibrant body of scholarship and activism in state freedom of information law.

[¶] We, moreover, find this omission characteristic of a broader ignorance in legal academia of the sweat and toil of legal scholars, scholar-practitioners, and interdisciplinary academics who analyze and advocate for state transparency laws. This blind spot particularly manifests, unfortunately, among those at elite (typically coastal) law schools, who generally contribute vitally to the literature of the undoubtedly important federal transparency regime. These federal freedom-of-information scholars too often neglect the critical importance of state transparency laws – as well as state-transparency legal academics.

[¶] Quite in contrast, state-law access advocates generally acknowledge the value of federal statutory analogs, often referencing federal norms and practices comparatively, while, nonetheless, working upon the apt assumption that state access laws, en masse, have a greater day-to-day impact in improving Americans’ lives and in enhancing democratic accountability in America than does the federal Freedom of Information Act. Koningisor’s article evidences this disappointing tension. 

The publication is Transparency Blind Spot: A Response to Transparency Deserts, 48 Rutgers L. Rec. 1 (2020).  The publication is available for download from SSRN.  

Christina Koningisor, author of the referenced Transparency Deserts, kindly responded on the FOI listserv and gave me permission to share her thoughts.  Included is a link to her ongoing work.  Professor Steinbuch and I could not be happier to engage in a dialog that educates scholars and the public on the importance of state FOIA.

[T]hank you to Rick and Rob for taking the time to so thoughtfully respond to my piece. I sincerely appreciate it. And I take your points of criticism. The article certainly could have benefited from drawing more upon the excellent state-level scholarship that you cite in your response to my piece. I will also be sure, moving forward, to draw more heavily from the accomplished work being done by communications and journalism scholars. The point that I meant to make in my article, and which I should have stated more clearly, is that there is less overarching scholarship on public records laws across the fifty states. Of course, there are excellent state-by-state studies and critiques, some of which I cite in my piece, and many of which I do not, and which you have helpfully flagged in your response. But I was more interested in the work that has been done looking at the state of these laws as a whole. At this level, we can begin to make generalizations about what is working and what is not that are more difficult to observe when focusing solely on a single state. Rick and Rob's response seems to suggest that such surveys are inherently flawed, because they will inevitably be underinclusive and cannot possibly account for the variation across the fifty state legal regimes and the hundreds of thousands of state and local government entities. I agree—I explicitly make this point, and acknowledge the limitations of tackling such a diverse array of laws and government entities in my article's methodology section. But I believe it is nonetheless important to take stock of how these laws operate nationwide, so long as we are forthright and honest about the limitations of any fifty-state survey. I think there is value in and space in the literature for both state-by-state deep-dives and overarching cross-state examinations. Rick and Rob do highlight, in their appendix, some of the broader cross-state scholarship on state public records law that I failed to cite, most of which are published in communications and journalism journals. Again, I concede this point and agree that I should become more familiar with this interdisciplinary work.

I also want to note briefly that my Article reaches a somewhat more nuanced conclusion than transparency is simply worse at the state and local level. I do stress the significant advantages that many state public records laws have over FOIA, including the more rapid response times, the absence of a national security apparatus and classification process impeding access, and, often, the greater accessibility of state and local records officers, among other advantages. I also note that many of these state laws suffer drawbacks when compared to FOIA: many do not have easy and relatively cheap administrative-level appeal options, for example, and the costs of records production at the state and local level can often be prohibitive. Further, although there is no national security secrecy apparatus at the state and local level, it is often exceptionally difficult to obtain records from state and local law enforcement agencies. The piece was in fact inspired by my experiences working as a lawyer at The New York Times, where, in the process of assisting reporters with their federal, state, and local records requests across the country (not just in the coastal states!), I noticed that local police departments were often the most difficult agencies to obtain records from, in some ways even more secretive and difficult to work with than even the federal intelligence agencies. But more critically, the article emphasizes that when these state laws do fail—and I think we can all agree that they sometimes do—there are fewer alternative routes for information to come to light. These transparency failures are exacerbated by broader structural features of state and local government, including reduced external checks from local media and civil society organizations, and reduced intra-governmental checks between the various branches of government. This is of course not to say that every law fails in every instance, or that there aren't many excellent civil society organizations in many places doing critical work on government transparency and oversight. Of course there are abundant examples of such laudable advocacy efforts. But there are also many places across the country where local media institutions have disappeared, civil society organizations are in dire financial straits, and intra-governmental checks are muted. The nation's access laws are remarkably diverse, and contain myriad examples of both transparency failures and successes.

Once again, I very much appreciate these thoughtful and incisive responses to my piece, and I hope to continue this conversation moving forward. I have a new state transparency law-related article, [Secrecy Creep,] forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. It is still quite early in the editing process, so I would love to hear any feedback and suggestions ....