American Oversight Chief Counsel Answers Law Students’ Questions About Government Transparency Work and Organization’s Mission
As American Oversight’s chief counsel told Boston College law students, “It’s not on you to save the entire world, but you have to do your part.”
“We fight for transparency; we believe in protecting our [democratic] tools,” American Oversight Chief Counsel Ron Fein told Boston College Law School students during a talk in April. His statement aimed to answer a seemingly simple question: What does American Oversight do?
During his talk, titled “American Oversight: Holding Government Accountable Through Government Transparency,” Fein discussed the nonprofit watchdog’s history of fighting for state and federal government documents, and provided the future lawyers with key insights about public records litigation.
The event, sponsored by the law school’s chapter of the American Constitution Society, was attended by dozens of current law students who asked about American Oversight’s legal processes for seeking public records and holding the government accountable. The students asked about how American Oversight knows where to search for important documents, how they might be able to practice similar impact litigation after graduation, and how the current administration’s efforts to evade or even dismantle the government’s transparency obligations could affect pro-accountability work. Fein, after providing details about several different federal and state records laws, said, “Transparency requirements can be satisfied by being transparent,” but acknowledged that does not always happen in practice, which is where American Oversight’s litigation often begins.
Fein provided details about several of the organization’s important public records investigations, including our exposure of the seven fraudulent electoral certificates submitted in 2020, our 2023 case against a secret panel in Wisconsin to advise on the impeachment of a recently elected justice, and our current lawsuit against top Trump administration officials who used the encrypted messaging app Signal for classified discussions about military strikes in Yemen, with at least some of the messages having been set to auto-delete. Fein spoke to the fast pace required in American Oversight’s litigation, especially under an increasingly authoritarian administration. “On Monday, the news broke about the infamous Signal group chat,” he explained. “The next day we filed a complaint citing the Federal Records Act. The next day we filed a motion for a preservation order. The next day the judge called us in and granted our motion for the preservation order.”
Fein also spoke to the importance of practicing law ethically, whether in the private, government, or nonprofit sectors. “This is a challenging time,” he told the room. “The most important thing is to live with integrity. You’ll be asked to make compromises over and over again, and you want to look back years from now and know that you did the right thing.”
“It is not on you to save the entire world, but you have to do your part,” Fein added.