DOJ "Blue Book" (Its Litigation Manual) Unsealed in
Part
As reported here, here and here, the National Association of Criminal
Defense Lawyers (NACDL) has been in hot pursuit of the litigation
manual of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), known as the
"Blue Book." The NACDL had filed a Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) request for the Blue Book, but the DOJ determined it was
exempt from disclosure as attorney work product. The district court
agreed, and the NACDL appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia. That court largely agreed but remanded the
case to the district court to "assess whether the Blue Book
contains non-exempt statement of policy that are reasonably
segregable [from] the protected attorney work product and therefore
should be disclosed." After that long endeavor, the NACDL won
a small victory when the district court ordered a few portions of
the Blue Book to be disclosed, and those passages have now been
unsealed. For more
