easyreader icon Obama – Executive Order on Presidential Records

by Annette DemersI am one of two Reference Librarians at the Paul Martin Law Library at the University of Windsor. I obtained my Bachelor of Arts Degree (Honours, Law) from Carleton University, my Bachelor of Laws from Windsor and my Master of Library and Information Science from Western. Currently, I Chair the Conference Planning Committee which will bring the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries to Windsor in 2010. I am a member of the ILS Steering Committee which is working on our migration to the open source Evergreen integrated library system. I was the VP Women's Issues and Chair of the Status of Women Committee for the Windsor University Faculty Association (WUFA) from 2006 - 2008. I was also a member of the Executive Committee, Faculty Council and the Contracts Committee of WUFA. Prior to my employment at the Paul Martin Law Library, I worked as a Reference Librarian for International, Foreign and Comparative Law at the Harvard Law School Library. While working at Harvard, I was the editor of the newsletter of the American Association of Law Libraries Foreign, Comparative and International Law Special Interest Section. I also worked as a volunteer consultant to the Coalition for an International Criminal Court documentation center. I attended the Hague Academy of International Law in the summer of 1995. Prior to working at Harvard, I worked as a student in libraries for over 20 years, including the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Library and the Library of Parliament. I am interested in environmental law and policy, information technology used in legal research, RSS and newsfeed technologies, web design and graphics software, human rights, international law, foreign law, and the International Criminal Court.
[click on the author's name to go to email and web page links] on January 22nd, 2009

Well it is great to see some rational decision making coming out of the Whitehouse these days. Today I note Obama’s Executive Order on Presidential Records has been added to the Whitehouse website.

Hopefully this will help fulfill one of the many things on Michel-Adrien’s Wish List!

Here’s a snippet:

“By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to establish policies and procedures governing the assertion of executive privilege by incumbent and former Presidents in connection with the release of Presidential records by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) pursuant to the Presidential Records Act of 1978, it is hereby ordered as follows…”

By the way, Obama’s Executive Order – Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel has also been posted.

Happy New Year!

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Currently there are 3 comments on “Obama – Executive Order on Presidential Records” :

  1. John G has this comment:
    January 22nd, 2009 at 10:44 pm

    I suppose it adds to the apparent legitimacy of the action for it to be expressed in such archaic legalese (“gee, I guess he’s really the President, he’s sounding like the other Presidents”), but as a matter of pure (?) style, if you start “by the authority vested in me…” should you not continue “I order that…”, rather than “it is hereby ordered” (not even “by me”)?

    Is there any legal point to the recital of the authority, especially when it is so general? Or is it just bluff and bluster while people start paying attention, or to make them pay attention by mentioning such important stuff as the Constitution and the laws of the USA?

  2. Wendy Reynolds has this comment:
    January 23rd, 2009 at 8:45 am

    It’s funny how records management has surged into prominence in the past few weeks – first, with the concern that NARA and/or Library of Congress would not have the capacity to store the volume of electronic records (mostly e-mail) generated by the Bush administration, then the sudden disappearance/reappearance of 15 million records related to the Katrina response and the war in Iraq.
    For all its bluster, it is nice to see the Obama administration thinking about this issue in advance, rather than bumbling around afterward.

  3. John Q Public has this comment:
    January 23rd, 2009 at 10:06 am

    For those of us who are not lawyers or constitutional scholars, what does this Executive Order ACTUALLY DO?

    I’ve tried reading it, but I fall asleep at about the second paragraph.

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