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The Early Years of the Freedom of Information Act—1955 to 1974

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Sam Archibald
Sam Archibald*
Affiliation:
University of Colorado–Boulder
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Extract

The Freedom of Information Act was conceived in partisan planning, went through its gestation period immersed in public relations and saw the light of day in 1966 because of a political deal. But that's all right. The same process 200 years ago developed the Bill of Rights with its First Amendment guarantee of freedom of expression—a freedom which becomes an effective tool of democracy when citizens, using the Freedom of Information Act, can find out what their government is doing.

A bill of rights to protect citizens against government excesses was proposed in the closing days of the Constitutional Convention but was voted down by those delegates, including James Madison, who saw the move as a political ploy to block the plan for a strong federal government (Madison 1987, 630).

Madison almost lost his race for a House of Representatives seat in the 1st Congress because his opponent, James Monroe, raised the issue of Madison's vote against a bill of rights in the Constitutional Convention (Rutland 1987, 308). Madison promised to work for a bill of rights if he was elected; he kept his promise, demanding that the 1st Congress give as much attention to protecting citizens' rights as to creating the agencies of the new government and solving its monetary problems.

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , December 1993 , pp. 726 - 731
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1993

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