The Information Power and Its Discontents
Date of Event
11-11-2026
Description
12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
The federal executive wields vast power to determine what official information reaches the public. The public, in turn, relies on this information to conduct research, do business, and make countless health, economic, and personal decisions. Moreover, this information forms the basis for a shared public reality that makes self-governance possible. From census surveys and food safety alerts to economic indicators, crime statistics, and climate conditions, official data establish the evidentiary record for society. Agencies enjoy significant discretion regarding what official information to publish, and even how, when, and whether to publish in the first instance. Call this the “information power.” Although there is a loose assemblage of statutes, executive directives, and internal agency rules that govern some of these decisions, most are discretionary. Courts, Congress, scholars, and even agencies themselves are not quite sure what to do about them. The decisions may seem ministerial but really reflect a deeper “information policy” that is imbued with value judgments and normative priorities.
This Article makes three principal contributions. First, it describes the “information power” as a form of executive authority distinct from rulemaking, adjudication, and enforcement, encompassing agency decisions to collect, create, preserve, organize, interpret, disseminate, and alter official information.
Second, it identifies the assorted statutes, directives, and internal rules that apply as “information policy,” and demonstrates how the legal architecture has not kept pace with the sprawling informational architecture it purports to govern. In the process, it documents how information policy has evolved under recent administrations and how the power has been abused, including efforts to delete websites and data sets, scrub terminology and topics deemed verboten, and even reduce agency capacity to collect and disseminate information. Finally, it confronts the challenge of how to constrain abuses without preventing agencies from deciding how best to alert and inform the public. ...
Subject Headings
executive branch and information power; governing and information power; constraining agency's abuse of information power
Location
Virtual and CWRU School of Law Moot Courtroom (students only)
Document Type
Video
Recommended Citation
Cortez, Nathan, "The Information Power and Its Discontents" (2026). Conferences and Symposia. 1172.
https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/law_videos_general/1172