Information Access-Surveying the Current Legal Landscape of Federal Right-to-Know Laws

This Symposium was convened to assess how, in this new age of environmental law, scholars, advocates, policy makers, journalists, and other interested members of the public can gain access to and harness information about the environment. The author's modest role is to provide an overview of fe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inTexas law review Vol. 86; no. 7; p. 1787
Main Author Vladeck, David C
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Austin University of Texas, Austin, School of Law Publications, Inc 01.06.2008
Subjects
Access to information
Attorneys general
Business information
Chemicals
Disclosure
Emergency preparedness
Environmental law
Federal advisory bodies
Freedom of information
Government agencies
Legislation
Litigation
Memoranda
Public access
Right to know
United States > US
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Summary:This Symposium was convened to assess how, in this new age of environmental law, scholars, advocates, policy makers, journalists, and other interested members of the public can gain access to and harness information about the environment. The author's modest role is to provide an overview of federal right-to-know laws, including the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and to ask whether these statutes ensure that environmental information is made available to the public in a timely and dependable way. First, right-to-know laws should place an affirmative duty on the government to make environmental information available to the public. Second, right-to-know laws should grapple with the crosscutting problem of confidential business information, which is the most frequently invoked justification for denying public access to environmental data. FOIA establishes a presumption of open access to all records in the hands of the federal government.
ISSN:0040-4411
1942-857X