The engine room

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Lindsay Mast.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

When we think about how government works, we tend to picture elections, court rulings, and big speeches. But a lot of the real work happens in places you don’t typically see.

Here’s WORLD Opinions commentator Daniel Suhr.

DANIEL SUHR: When most people think about the U.S. Department of Justice, they think about the attorney general, or whatever legal case is dominating cable news that week.

They probably do not think about the Office of Legal Counsel.

Yet, if you want to understand how governing actually happens, you have to look in places like this—offices that operate outside the spotlight, where policy translates into action.

OLC serves as the executive branch’s in-house law firm. That means when the president or federal agencies face a difficult legal question—what the law allows them to do or not do—they turn to OLC for answers. 

These opinions do not make law on their own. 

At his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing last year, the current head of the office, Elliott Gaiser, described the office’s role this way:

GAISER: The functions of OLC date to the Judiciary Act of 1789, and it has served to uphold the rule of law and the separation of powers into the modern era by issuing opinions and answering legal questions according to the best reading of the law.

The office establishes that legal framework that allows policy to move forward. And in recent months, that framework has been moving policy in a distinctly conservative direction.

Take a familiar example: the federal Lifeline program—the one critics dubbed the “Obamaphone” program.

Now, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is making sure benefits go only to those lawfully entitled to receive them. That means no dead recipients and no ineligible noncitizens.

But that effort relies on a legal foundation, and part of that foundation comes from the Office of Legal Counsel—through opinions correctly concluding that certain federal benefits programs are limited to citizens and lawful long-term residents.

Here’s how Gaiser puts it:

GAISER: When you're a law clerk, your first task is to do your best to state the law in a way that the judge can use your work. And you're not the decider, you’re there to do research, to provide your independent, candid, and honest view of the law. And, should I be so fortunate to be confirmed, … that would be my primary aim, to always provide the best legal advice that I could give.

There are other examples of the office’s impact.

OLC recently concluded that race-based education grant programs cannot stand under the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, especially following the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions.

In another case, OLC withdrew a prior opinion that allowed abortion in Veterans Affairs medical facilities—reasoning that Congress had already made clear that the VA cannot provide taxpayer funded abortion.

And OLC has cleared the way for lawful gun owners to ship firearms through the mail—reasoning that these longstanding restrictions can't be squared with our nation’s even longer history and tradition of firearm regulation.

None of these decisions on their own, dominate the news cycle. But taken together, they show how governing actually works.

Let me put it this way: Campaign promises do not implement themselves. They have to be translated into actions that are legally defensible that turn the president’s priorities into policy.

That may not make headlines. But it is one of the places where the real work of governing gets done—quietly, and often out of view.

For WORLD, I’m Daniel Suhr.

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