Enforcement of State Open Meetings Laws

Download or read book Enforcement of State Open Meetings Laws written by Charles N. Davis and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neither the First Amendment nor the common law provides access to meetings of state or local governing bodies to the press and public. Hence, access can be obtained only through statutes. The 50 states enacted open meetings or "sunshine" laws designed to guarantee the rights of the public to attend meetings of governmental bodies. The statutes describe which officials and agencies are subject to the law, provide definitions of key terms such as "meeting", "official business", and "governmental agency", and often explain how an agency may close a meeting and under what conditions closure is allowed. Every state provides a mechanism to enforce the open meetings law, but the enforcement provisions very widely in breadth of coverage and in the types of remedies available to prosecutors or citizens seeking to enforce the law's requirements. This study reviews the enforcement provisions of state open meetings laws in an effort to determine whether the provisions advance the principles of open meetings laws. The study examines the various open meetings statutes, analyzes judicial opinions interpreting the statutes and presents the findings of a pair of surveys designed to measure enforcement activity. The study critiques the current enforcement structure by analyzing the provisions in light of the major philosophical justifications for legal punishment, and provides suggestions for reform of open meetings laws.