The Office of Legal Counsel

By Kristopher A. Nelson
in February 2009

200 words / 1 min.
Tweet Share Image via Wikipedia Is the Office of Legal Counsel Constitutional? Some notes on the American Conseil Constitutionnel - Balkinization: The bottom line is that the OLC has become one of the most important law making bodies in our constitutional system, creating binding law that affects what is by far the largest branch of our government. […]

Please note that this post is from 2009. Evaluate with care and in light of later events.

U.S. Supreme Court building.Image via Wikipedia

Is the Office of Legal Counsel Constitutional? Some notes on the American Conseil Constitutionnel – Balkinization:

The bottom line is that the OLC has become one of the most important law making bodies in our constitutional system, creating binding law that affects what is by far the largest branch of our government. For this reason, we should begin to understand the OLC more in the way that we view the Supreme Court and the federal courts of appeals. That is, we should begin to think of it more and more as a quasi-judicial institution.

An interesting discussion of the “Office of Legal Counsel” and it’s role as a kind of executive branch supreme court that specializes only in advisory opinions, something the actual, judicial branch Supreme Court is forbidden to do.

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