Today I’d like to post the two main documents with the Congressional Research Service’s explanation of their policy regarding public distribution of their documents. First is the memo from January 1998.

Page 7 has one of the better arguments, explaining how public dissemination would render CRS no longer exempt to being required to go to court based on their legal research (if I’m reading it correctly)… (also, it seems that the ocr is a little garbled on this pdf…)

B. Legal Issues
This section considers three pertinent Jegal issues associated with the
wholesaJe disse~uon of CRS products to the pubJjc. The first two issues
involve the speech or debate c]ause of the Constjtutjon and the third deals with
intellectuaJ property questions.
1. Widespread electronic dissemination to the general public oj CRS Reports
and Issue Briefs would be more likely than dissenJination pursuant to current
policy to precipitate litigation in which speech or debate clause immunity would
not be 4 defense.

The other is the more recent document, a memo from March 2007 intended to tighten access to CRS products.

I wonder to what degree the objections are overcome of Congress distributes the reports wholesale. In other words, if Congress did the distributing, does CRS retain their sole legislative function, continue to abstain from serving the public, and therefore maintain their exemption via the speech and debate clause?

Here are some of POGO’s detailed responses to these issues.

For additional info on current CRS access efforts, see this post by Ari Schwartz.