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Troubling Transparency brings together leading scholars from different disciplines to analyze freedom of information policies in the United States and abroad¿how they are working, how they are failing, and how they might be improved, especially the mixed legacy and effectiveness of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Troubling Transparency, by David E. Pozen and Michael Schudson
Part I: FOIA’s Historical and Conceptual Foundations
1. How Administrative Opposition Shaped the Freedom of Information Act, by Sam Lebovic
2. Positive Rights, Negative Rights, and the Right to Know, by Frederick Schauer
3. FOIA as an Administrative Law, by Mark Fenster
Part II: FOIA and the News Media
4. The Other FOIA Requesters, by Margaret B. Kwoka
5. State FOI Laws: More Journalist-Friendly, or Less?, by Katherine Fink
6. FOIA and Investigative Reporting: Who’s Asking What, Where, and When—and Why It Matters, by James T. Hamilton
Part III: Theorizing Transparency Tactics
7. The Ecology of Transparency Reloaded, by Seth F. Kreimer
8. Monitoring the U.S. Executive Branch Inside and Out: The Freedom of Information Act, Inspectors General, and the Paradoxes of Transparency, by Nadia Hilliard
9. Output Transparency vs. Input Transparency, by Cass R. Sunstein
10. Open Data: The Future of Transparency in the Age of Big Data, by Beth Simone Noveck
11. Striking the Right Balance: Weighing the Public Interest in Access to Agency Records Under the Freedom of Information Act, by Katie Townsend and Adam A. Marshall
Part IV: Comparative Perspectives
12. The Global Influence of the United States on Freedom of Information, by Kyu Ho Youm and Toby Mendel
13. Transparency as Leverage or Transparency as Monitoring? U.S. and Nordic Paradigms in Latin America, by Gregory Michener
14. Structural Corruption and the Democratic-Expansive Model of Transparency in Mexico, by Irma Eréndira Sandoval-Ballesteros
List of Contributors
Index
About the author
David E. Pozen is a professor of law at Columbia Law School and an internationally noted scholar of constitutional law and informational law. Pozen served as the inaugural visiting scholar at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University during the 2017–2018 academic year.
Michael Schudson is a professor of journalism at the Columbia Journalism School. A MacArthur Foundation fellow, he is the author of eight books, including, most recently, The Rise of the Right to Know: Politics and the Culture of Transparency, 1945–1975 (2015).
Summary
Troubling Transparency brings together leading scholars from different disciplines to analyze freedom of information policies in the United States and abroad—how they are working, how they are failing, and how they might be improved, especially the mixed legacy and effectiveness of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Additional text
Troubling Transparency comprises the most important contemporary scholarship on FOIA and its place in the ecosystem of government transparency. Each chapter provides a fresh, often bracing perspective on FOIA’s foundations, its functions, and whether it is serving the lofty democratic and good-government objectives that it was meant to advance. Essential reading for any scholar of government secrecy or accountability.
