Vaughn v. Rosen’s Empirical Analysis
1975
Citation profile
26 federal appellate · 10 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 55 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2014 · most notably Department of the Air Force v. Rose (1976), Federal Bureau of Investigation v. Abramson (1982)
26 federal appellate · 10 district · 3 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 29 U.S.C. § 651 (§ 2 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970) · 44 U.S.C. § 305 · 5 U.S.C. § 1002 · 5 U.S.C. § 3301 (Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998) · 5 U.S.C. § 4501 · 5 U.S.C. § 552 (Freedom of Information Act) · 5 U.S.C. § 553 (Administrative Procedure Act of 1946)
Relies on National Labor Relations Board v. Sears, Roebuck & Co. · Environmental Protection Agency v. Mink · Vaughn v. Rosen · Barrett v. United States · Jones v. Nor-Tex Agencies, Inc.
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 55 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“agency give-and-take of the deliberative process by which the decision itself is made.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(2) INTERNAL PROCEDURES “[The provisions of] this section [shall not be applicable] to matters that are * * * (2) related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of any agency;” The House report explains that the words “personnel rules and practices” in subsection (e) are meant to relate to those matters which are for the guidance of agency personnel only, including internal rules and practices which cannot be disclosed to the public without substantial prejudice to the effective performance of a significant agency function. The examples cited in the House report (H.Rept., 10) are “operating rules, guidelines, and manuals of procedure for Government investigators or examiners.” An agency cannot bargain effectively for the acquisition of lands or services or the disposition of surplus facilities if its instructions to its negotiators and its offers to prospective sellers or buyers are not kept confidential. Similarly, an agency must keep secret the circumstances under which it will conduct unannounced inspections or spot audits of supervised transactions to determine compliance with regulatory requirements. The moment such operations become predictable, their usefulness is destroyed. As the examples cited in the House report indicate, the exemption in subsection (e)(2) is designed to permit the withholding of agency records relating to management operations to the extent that the proper performance of necessary agency functions requires such withholding. However, ”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Cases that have previously analyzed the applicability of exemption 2 have done so largely in the discrete context of deciding disclosability of government manuals. These manuals set guidelines for employees carrying out agency policies applicable to the public. The courts have ordered disclosure of “secret law” as within the disclosure mandate of 5 U.S.C. § 552 (a)(2)(C) (‘administrative staff manual . . . that affect[s] a member of the public’), while protecting agency techniques that if disclosed would materially lessen the agency’s effectiveness vis-a-vis the public it regulates. . (emphasis supplied; footnote omitted).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.