Tag Archives: law review

A comparison of US and EU freedom of information regimes

For what it’s worth, I’ve been reviewing a law review article that I wrote in 2006 comparing, on the one hand, the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and, on the other hand, E.U. Regulation 1049/2001.European_UnionUSflag

The paper,  Ever Closer Transparency: Comparing the European Regulation on Public Access to Documents with the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, tries to accomplish three tasks: (i) establishing the theoretical context for freedom of information and the policy rationales underlying it, (ii) explicates the text of FOIA (5 U.S.C. §552), as adopted in 1966 and amended in 1974 in the United States, and Regulation 1049/2001, as adopted in the European Union in 2001, elucidating their similarities and differences, and (iii) providing five recommendations to strengthen the freedom-of-information regimes in each country.

Given that I spent the next part of the year taking the New York bar exam and jumping into a fund formation legal practice at Latham & Watkins, I never followed up with actually publishing the article, so I’m considering revising the paper and submitting it.

Any comments or recommendations on the original text (see in Scribd below — the link is here) are very much welcomed!