In the case of United States Department of Justice et al. v. Julian et al., 1987, the Supreme Court ruled that federal prisoners have a right to access their presentence investigation reports (PSRs) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The court held in a unanimous decision that PSRs are agency records subject to FOIA and not exempted by Exemption 3 or Exemption 5 as claimed by the government. The government had argued that these exemptions protected PSRs from disclosure due to confidentiality concerns and attorney work-product privilege respectively. However, the court rejected these arguments stating that once a report is submitted to a judge for sentencing purposes it becomes an agency record accessible under FOIA unless specifically exempted otherwise.

In the dissenting opinion for UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE et al. v. JULIAN et al., Justice Antonin Scalia argued that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) does not require agencies to disclose presentence reports to those who are subjects of such reports. He contended that FOIA was designed to inform citizens about what their government is up to, and not necessarily provide a means for individuals to discover information about themselves held by federal agencies; this latter purpose being served by the Privacy Act instead. Furthermore, he emphasized that Congress had explicitly exempted these types of documents from disclosure under FOIA due its sensitive nature and potential misuse if disclosed indiscriminately. Therefore, in his view, it was inappropriate for courts to override this legislative decision based on their own policy preferences or interpretations.