Changing Course on Freedom of Information: The 1911 Typhoid Records Case

Abstract A request for information about New York City’s typhoid outbreak of 1911 prompted one of the first court rulings to reverse the nineteenth-century trend of opening access to government information. In the background was a fundamental shift in the political theory of American local government and a clash of two different approaches to reform of municipal government: that of the outside gadfly versus the approach of working within the institution. The case In the Matter of Allen set a pattern for freedom of information law of narrowing a statutory right in order to protect institutions of government.