Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Saving the Freedom of Information Act
  • Cited by 7
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
October 2021
Print publication year:
2021
Online ISBN:
9781108697637
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108697637
Subjects:
Constitutional and Administrative Law, Area Studies, American Studies, American Government, Politics and Policy, Law, Politics and International Relations
Information

Book description

Enacted in 1966, The Freedom of Information Act (or FOIA) was designed to promote oversight of governmental activities, under the notion that most users would be journalists. Today, however, FOIA is largely used for purposes other than fostering democratic accountability. Instead, most requesters are either individuals seeking their own files, businesses using FOIA as part of commercial enterprises, or others with idiosyncratic purposes like political opposition research. In this sweeping, empirical study, Margaret Kwoka documents how agencies have responded to the large volume of non-oversight requesters by creating new processes, systems, and specialists, which in turn has had a deleterious impact on journalists and the media. To address this problem, Kwoka proposes a series of structural solutions aimed at shrinking FOIA to re-center its oversight purposes.

Reviews

‘Margaret Kwoka has done a great service in illuminating how one of the world's most famous transparency laws works, and fails to work. Combining pathbreaking empirical research with insightful critique and sensible proposals for reform, Saving the Freedom of Information Act is essential reading for all who care about FOIA.'

David Pozen - Columbia Law School, New York

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents
References

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.