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48 Rutgers L. Rec. 1 (2020-2021)

handle is hein.journals/rutglr48 and id is 1 raw text is: TRANSPARENCY BLIND SPOT: A RESPONSE TO TRANSPARENCYDESERTS Richard J. Peltz-Steele* Robert Steinbuch** We have read with interest Christina Koningisor's publication, Transparency Deserts.1 While there is much to be lauded in the work - all access advocates would like to see more scholarship and publicity about the importance of transparency and accountability - we are disheartened by the article's failure to recognize the extant vibrant body of scholarship and activism in state freedom of information law. We, moreover, find this omission characteristic of a broader ignorance in legal academia of the sweat and toil of legal scholars, scholar-practitioners, and interdisciplinary academics who analyze and advocate for state transparency laws. This blind spot particularly manifests, unfortunately, among those at elite (typically coastal) law schools, who generally contribute vitally to the literature of the undoubtedly important federal transparency regime. These federal freedom-of-information scholars too often neglect the critical importance of state transparency laws - as well as state-transparency legal academics. Quite in contrast, state-law access advocates generally acknowledge the value of federal statutory analogs, often referencing federal norms and practices comparatively, while, nonetheless, working upon the apt assumption that state access laws, en masse, have a greater day-to-day impact in improving Americans' lives and in enhancing democratic * Richard J. Peltz-Steele is Chancellor Professor at the University of Massachusetts Law School. He received his J.D. from Duke Law School and his B.A., in journalism and Spanish, from Washington and Lee University. He worked in commercial litigation defense before transitioning to teaching in 1998. He was inspired to go to law school to represent journalists after being a college news reporter frustrated by stand-offs with police over access to public records. He abandoned Big Law after consolidation in the news industry in the 1990s stripped his firm of its local media clients. Peltz-Steele is the co-author, along with John J. Watkins and Robert Steinbuch, of the treatise THE ARKANSAS FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (6th ed. 2017). He has published extensively on access and transparency law, as discussed herein. ** Robert Steinbuch is a 2015 Fulbright Scholar and Professor of Law at The University of Arkansas, Little Rock, William H. Bowen School of Law. Professor Steinbuch received his J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Law & Economics Fellow, and received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a former judicial law clerk on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and former attorney with the United States Department of Justice, the United States Internal Revenue Service, and the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. He currently serves as the Chairman of the Arkansas Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights and is a member of the Arkansas Transparency in Government Group, the Arkansas Freedom of Information Task Force, and the Arkansas Freedom of Information Commission. Steinbuch, as mentioned above, is the co-author, along with John J. Watkins and Peltz-Steele, of the treatise THE ARKANSAS FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (6th ed. 2017). He additionally has published extensively on access and transparency law, as also discussed herein. This article reflects Professor Steinbuch's focus in his scholarship on blind spots in the law and legal academia. See, e.g., Robert Steinbuch & Kim Love, Color- Blind-Spot: The Intersection of Freedom of Information Law and Affirmative Action in Law School Admissions, 20 TEx. REv. L. & POL. 1 (2016) (discussing the intersection of transparency law and affirmative action in law-school admissions). 1 Christina Koningisor, Transparency Deserts, 114 Nw. U. L. REv. 1461 (2020).

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