Ethics

Appeals Court Rejects State Secrets Privilege

By Ed Brayton

In a very important ruling, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected the invocation of the state secrets privilege (SSP) by both the Bush and Obama administrations. Both administrations argued that once the state secrets privilege is invoked, the court has to dismiss the case without ever looking at the evidence or hearing legal arguments. A three judge panel rejected that argument, saying that they can only invoke that privilege to prevent the use of specific pieces of evidence in the case.

The crux of the case is whether the SSP is an evidentiary privilege, meaning it applies only to particular items in evidence in a case, or whether it requires that the entire case be dismissed. There are two key cases here, Totten, where a case was dismissed because it involved a secret agreement between the government and a contractor, and Reynolds, where the court only ruled out some specific evidence because it would involve revealing state secrets.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on April 29, 2009 (boomark / email).