Reading Room Document

Presidential Certification Regarding the Provision of Documents to the House of Representatives Under the Mexican Debt Disclosure Act of 1995

The Mexican Debt Disclosure Act of 1995 requires that, before certain assistance is extended to Mexico, the President must certify that he has provided the House of Representatives with the documents described in House Resolution 80. The President submitted a certification that indicated that the executive branch had not provided to the House certain documents because it would be inconsistent with the public interest to do so. The Act is best interpreted as incorporating an exception for those documents as to which disclosure would not be in the public interest. Therefore, the President's certification was a legally sufficient formulation of the certification required by the Act. The OLC does not provide release dates for its opinions, so the release date listed is the date on which the opinion was authored. The original opinion is available at www.justice.gov/file/20006/download.

June 28, 1996