A Washington Post Op-Ed piece written by Life Member Mark P. Schlefer details the efforts of a small group of Washington lawyers, including Schlefer, to draft the Freedom of Information Act and enact it into law.
“We never set out to solve a national problem, but the obstacles we encountered show how closed the government was before FOIA. We often needed government documents to build a case but were rebuffed with the assertion that documents were internal to the agency and ‘confidential.’”
It was Mr. Schlefer’s own experience as a maritime lawyer that exposed him to the hurdles in acquiring government documents. When he approached the American Bar Association about the possibility of drafting a bill to tackle this issue, he learned that many lawyers faced the same obstacle, a common occurrence prior to the enactment of FOIA.
For more details on the story behind drafting FOIA, read Mr. Schlefer’s Piece.