An important area of mass communication studies concerns legal limitations placed on public access to decisions made by state-funded organizations. Though all 50 states and the Congress have enacted statutes allowing public access to government records, universities in some states have won court battles to protect documents concerning presidential…

This article examines state court decisions and legislative enactments concerning the applications of public records laws to university presidential searches. It reviews the arguments in support of, and in opposition to, open presidential-search records. Although many administrators favor openness, opponents of open searches argue that they…