Where does the name Freedom of Information Act arise from? I think there was a question that previously addressed the sequence in which it appeared in different parts of the world and traced the progression of its spread. But I'm now asking on one hand, how/why the concept was spread, and on the other how the name came to be in the first place: it is actually a pretty awkward name because information can't have freedom other than in the saying which attempts to ascribe it desire and propensity for freedom as a metaphorical device with which to make its point, &quot;information wants to be free.&quot; But Freedom of Information Acts' naming seems so cheesy, so what is the logic behind it?
The original law was 80 Stat 383, PL 89-554, which is a massive reorganization of the structure of federal agencies. It created title 5 entitled &quot;Government Organization and Employees&quot;. The act itself was not given a name: it did contain provisions in §552 requiring that information be made available, as opposed to being kept secret. Subsequently in 1974, PL 93-502 amended the law specifically w.r.t. §552, and the act begins with the text To amend section 552 of title 5, United States Code, known as the Freedom of Information Act Essentially, by this act of Congress, §552 was legislatively deemed to be &quot;known as&quot; the Freedom of Information Act. The expression was used earlier, see the documents here. This speech (June 20 1966) by Rep. Moss sets forth the arguments for the relevant bill S.1160 which amended title 5,, saying Our system of government is based on the participation of the governed, and as our population grows in numbers it is essential that it also grow in knowledge and understanding. We must remove every barrier to information about—and understanding of—government activities consistent with our security if the American public is to be adequately equipped to fulfill the ever more demanding role of responsible citizenship This is the sense in which the bill was about &quot;freedom of information&quot;. In the speech, he also refers (p. 3 of the scan) to the chairmen of the &quot;Freedom of Information Committees&quot;, and LBJ in his signing statement I have always felt that freedom of information is so important to our form of government that it should not be restricted except when there is an important reason for doing so This gave rise to an informal name to the act, which then was &quot;codified&quot; in 1974 by another act of Congress.
It does not need to be expressly defined in statute in order to be legally effective. Courts have no trouble interpreting ordinary words used in their conventional way. And there is no other definition that could work instead, considering the full body of law that (1) intends to apply to the whole of the United Kingdom, (2) often distinguishes between &quot;Great Britain&quot; and &quot;Northern Ireland&quot;, (3) often distinguishes between &quot;England&quot;, &quot;Wales&quot;, &quot;Scotland&quot; and &quot;Northern Ireland&quot;, (4) treats &quot;Great Britain&quot; as synonymous with England, Wales and Scotland, and (5) often uses &quot;Great Britain&quot; without further ceremony, as if it's a term that doesn't need to be explained. It is helpful that legislation (at least in the modern era) is consistent about the view that &quot;Great Britain&quot; refers precisely to England, Wales and Scotland all together. By virtue of the Interpretation Act 1978, &quot;United Kingdom&quot; means Great Britain and Northern Ireland. from which we may deduce immediately that Great Britain means the United Kingdom except for Northern Ireland. There is no sibling '&quot;Great Britain&quot; means...' clause, but construing it any other way than the normal meaning would not work. From the combined definitions of &quot;England&quot;, &quot;Wales&quot;, &quot;British Islands&quot;, etc. - which by reference, also deal with such historically doubtful areas as Berwick and Monmouthshire - there is no other way to interpret the term &quot;Great Britain&quot; without distorting the required meaning of &quot;United Kingdom&quot;. Including too much or too little in &quot;Great Britain&quot; would give the wrong result, in particular for statutory extent clauses that refer to the whole United Kingdom and ought not to accidentally leave out Cornwall or include Hanover. We do not need to go as far as the Acts of Union, which is lucky since that would entangle us in concerns about whether &quot;England&quot; includes &quot;Wales&quot;, or other historical anomalies that are not relevant in current law. I would treat the Acts of Union as giving added force to the conventional meaning, rather than being the source of that meaning, since there are uses of the term which seem to be more about Great Britain considered as a place than the political entity. For example, the Food Safety Act 1990 s.18(3) talks about &quot;any food which has not previously been used for human consumption in Great Britain&quot;, which seems to talk more about the food culture of the place, even predating the Acts of Union, than about the Kingdom of Great Britain or its successors. The term &quot;Great Britain&quot; is frequently used in statutes in the customary way. For example, The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 s.28 creates a &quot;Great Britain register&quot; and a &quot;Northern Ireland register&quot; of political parties, and s.38(1)(3)(b) provides for the &quot;Great Britain register&quot; to cover precisely England, Scotland and Wales. The Northern Ireland Act 1998 s.87 is about provisions of UK social security law that operate differently in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Electricity Act 1989 (as amended) provides for the issue of &quot;GB certificates&quot; as opposed to &quot;NI certificates&quot;, and also defines &quot;the relevant part of Great Britain&quot; as meaning either &quot;England and Wales&quot; or &quot;Scotland&quot; (s.32M(1)). The Agriculture Act 2020 s.35 provides for a &quot;red meat levy&quot; to be paid between &quot;one country in Great Britain&quot; and &quot;another such country&quot;, and goes on in 35(8) to list the levy bodies for England, Scotland and Wales. So all of this points to the same common meaning as in everyday life. In court, for example, Lord Hoffman in Serco v Lawson [2006] UKHL 3 had to consider the Employment Rights Act 1996 s.196, since repealed, which governed &quot;work wholly or mainly outside Great Britain&quot;. (And by the way, in 196(1)(b) is a listing of &quot;England and Wales&quot; and &quot;Scotland&quot; as the two possible bodies of law relating to Great Britain.) In his judgement, he says: It is true that section 244(1) says that the Act &quot;extends&quot; to England and Wales and Scotland (&quot;Great Britain&quot;). But that means only that it forms part of the law of Great Britain and does not form part of the law of any other territory (like Northern Ireland or the Channel Islands) for which Parliament could have legislated. That is, he does not find it difficult to gloss the extent provision in 244(1), which doesn't include the exact words &quot;Great Britain&quot;, as actually referring to Great Britain. Other legislation refers to &quot;Great Britain&quot; as a locale, like the Wild Animals in Circuses Act 2019 which talks about &quot;an animal of a kind which is not commonly domesticated in Great Britain&quot;. This is a straightforward reference to the kind of activities typically going on in that location, treating it as the island(s) and not the political entity. The expression does not include the territorial sea, by default; some statutes include it, like the Gas Act 1986 s.5(9) which says: For the purposes of this section a place is within the jurisdiction of Great Britain if it is in Great Britain, in the territorial sea adjacent to Great Britain or in an area designated under section 1(7) of the Continental Shelf Act 1964. There are several other instances of particular statutes defining &quot;Great Britain&quot; to include adjacent waters, but they do not define the core concept of Great Britain otherwise. They do not need to.
Congress did exactly this in the war of 1812. Normally, laws passed by Congress must be published after being made. In 1789, the First Congress instructed the Secretary of State with the duty of printing new statutes at least three newspapers, and the current law puts it in the hands of the Archivist of the United States; in between, there have been variations. On March 3, 1811, Congress passed a law saying simply: Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That this act, and the act passed during the present session of Congress, entitled “An act to enable the President of the United States, under certain contingencies, to take possession of the country lying east of the river Perdido, and south of the state of Georgia and the Mississippi territory, and for other purposes,” and the declaration accompanying the same, be not printed or published, until the end of the next session of Congress, unless directed by the President of the United States, any law or usage to the contrary notwithstanding. This overrode the normal publication rules in order to hide the existence of the cited earlier law, and of its own existence. The proceedings in Congress also took place in secret session, including the signing of the bills by the President, James Madison. As the title suggests, the earlier statute authorized Madison to use military force to take possession of the disputed territory (which was also claimed by Spain), establish a provisional government there, and use $100k of newly appropriated funds to do so. A further law of 1813, with the same secrecy provision, extended the territory and gave $20k more. These statutes were not published until 1818, after the war had ended and a further law reformed the publication of statute law in general. The supposed secrecy was also compromised in practice by the fact that the annexation of West Florida was widely known once it started happening. As far as we know, Congress has not experimented any further with suspending publication of its legislative activity. It is allowed to meet in secret session, and the Constitution allows secret material to be omitted from the official journal. Nowadays, we know pretty well when secret sessions have taken place, even if we don't know what happened during them. It would be practically very hard for Congress to hide the fact that it had met and passed a law. The closest modern counterpart is not a secret act, but the use of a &quot;classified schedule of authorizations&quot; or &quot;classified annex&quot; to direct spending on things that Congress does not wish to reveal. For example, in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022 (1068 page PDF), there are references like: &quot;there is appropriated $125,000,000, for an additional amount for 'National Defense Stockpile Transaction Fund', to remain available until September 30, 2024, which shall only be used for the acquisition and retention of certain materials, as specified in the classified annex accompanying this Act&quot; &quot;The amounts authorized to be appropriated under section 101 for the conduct of the intelligence activities of the elements listed in paragraphs (1) through (17) of section 101, are those specified in the classified Schedule of Authorizations prepared to accompany this division.&quot; The second bullet point covers billions of dollars of total spending, but it is not revealed that we are spending $7.18bn on a project to explode the moon, or whatever. So in this appropriations case, your hypothetical is pretty real: Congress could pass emergency legislation authorizing spending on something, without revealing what the something was. Other kinds of laws would raise their own issues. For example, a secret criminal statute would very likely fall foul of the Constitutional prohibition on ex post facto laws. The concept of a secret law is in many ways objectionable - natural justice, interference with democratic accountability, etc. - which makes it politically difficult as well as legally questionable.
Anyone can say anything on Wikipedia – even they tagged that claim as requiring a citation. There's no way to directly prove that there is no such requirement, but these guys maintains that there are no such laws in the US, and EFF says the same thing. This Wiki page agrees, giving details about a specific bill introduced in the House and also in the Senate in the 111th Congress that did not become a law (it did not survive the scrutiny of the judiciary committee in either case). Another failed attempt was in the 112th Congress.
If a line in your will bequeaths something that you don't have the power to give (e.g. you bequeath something that you don't own at the time of your death), that line has no legal effect. If I died and left you the house at 10 Downing Street in London, for example, you wouldn't actually be getting it. If your will contains enough of those lines and/or they seem excessively unreasonable, it may cause the validity of the will to be challenged on the basis that you weren't competent to prepare and sign it. If the people reading it think it's reasonable, it may have a social effect based on what it conveys to them, which could lead to voluntary compliance with your wish (especially if the main obstacle to that being realized is a mistaken understanding of and desire to respect your wishes). That could help make peace, for example, if a surviving parent's remarriage would otherwise be opposed by children (or the surviving partner) or others based solely on a mistaken understanding of the wishes of the deceased. It could also make for a really awkward moment, depending on the views of and relationships between survivors. Addressing user662852's comment on the question: You can also use a will to name a guardian for anyone you have guardianship over, which is usually more important for children (e.g. see "Why Every Parent Needs a Will.").
I'm sorry to deflate what is clearly a very philosophically interesting question, but the law is straightforward here. The truth, essentially, is the set of facts that you believe to be true. Yes. It means that you will not lie by omission, and that you will provide the relevant facts. No, you don't need to recount history since the first instant of the big bang. Only expert witnesses may answer by giving their opinion or evaluation. This is presumed accurate by their experience and where it is not accurate, the other side may present opposing expert witnesses to contest their conclusion or evaluation. Laypeople are permitted to answer only with their recollection of facts. Lawyers may not ask them what their opinion is, although by your definition every question is about opinion, since perception and memory is limited. But the question "What colour was Mr Smith's house?" and "What architectural style informed the facade of Mr Smith's house?" require different amounts of expertise and opinion. "Truth" isn't jargon, or even technical language here. I generally aim to be truthful, and so when someone asks me what time it is, I don't feel compelled to answer to the nano/picosecond. Would you call me a liar? Am I lying by omission? Similarly, if someone asks me what colour a car is, I don't feel compelled to say "I can't possibly know, because my perception may differ from yours. If you honestly feel that when someone asks you to be truthful about something, then you must either be lying, or lying by omission if you don't start your answer with the first instant of the big bang, your problem is not one of law.
The law was first promulgated on June 8, 1940 By the 76th Congress. The original text is here. It doesn’t seem to be a particularly important piece of legislation and I can find commentary on it and I’m not going to read the debates - if you do, please get back to us. Two points to note, it was passed at a time when most of the rest of the world was at war and the US was quietly preparing to be at war and it seems to be intended to fill a gap in state law since conviction under state law is a defence under Federal.
In the US, Congress may pass an act, and this creates one kind of law (if it is promulgated: signed, ignored, or re-passed with a super-majority). Some of those acts direct the executive branch to do things, and pursuant to that act, a regulation is promulgated. Together with case law, the whole thing is "law". A bill (in the House, or the Senate) may result in an act being passed by both houses. It may go through a number of drafts between the point when it is first introduced and the time it becomes an act.