Procedures and Practices for
Legal Decisions and Opinions
informal meetings nor conferences are transcribed. Unlike GAO audit products, OGC does not provide draft copies of its decisions or opinions for agency comment, nor does it provide preliminary conclusions or draft copies to the requesting accountable officers or agency heads or requesting committee or Member staff.
- Matters Which OGC Will Not Address
There are several types of issues which OGC will not decide or opine on. For example, unless required by law or requested by a court or administrative forum, OGC will decline to decide or opine on an issue when it becomes aware that the issue is pending before a federal court or administrative entity.[1] Similarly, OGC will not decide or opine on matters subject to ongoing criminal investigations. Nor will OGC decide or opine on the application of criminal statutes but instead will refer, as appropriate, such requests to appropriate law enforcement authorities.
Although relatively rare, OGC will decline to decide or opine on a matter where the issue presented is committed by law to a discretionary administrative determination typically involving political, military, international, or economic choices that are not readily susceptible to a legal review. And finally, when the validity of an act of Congress is drawn into question, OGC will indulge a heavy presumption in favor of constitutionality or, as appropriate, will adopt a construction to avoid the issue. Only in those cases where the Supreme Court has directly addressed the
- ↑ To protect the integrity of GAO’s statutory bid protest jurisdiction, as a matter of policy, GAO will not accept requests to review or evaluate an agency contract action where acceptance of the request would have the effect of circumventing the statutory rules, for example, rules regarding standing or timeliness, 4 C. F. R. §§ 21.1, 21.2, governing protests to GAO. See B-290488, May 30, 2002.
