Reforming the State Secrets Privilege: Two Views
Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey this week expressed strong Bush Administration opposition (pdf) to pending legislation that would regulate the use of the state secrets privilege in civil litigation.
The proposed “State Secrets Protection Act” (S.2533), the Attorney General wrote in a detailed seven-page letter, “would needlessly and improperly interfere with the appropriate constitutional role of both the Judicial and Executive branches in state secrets cases; would alter decades of settled case law; and would likely result in the harmful disclosure of national security information that would not be disclosed under current doctrine.”
In short, “We strongly oppose this legislation.”
See the Attorney General’s March 31, 2008 letter to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
At the request of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, an original sponsor of the State Secrets Protection Act, Attorney General Mukasey’s criticisms of the bill were reviewed and rebutted by Louis Fisher, the constitutional law expert at the Law Library of Congress.
“According to Attorney General Mukasey, Presidents are entitled to unilaterally define the scope of their powers under Article II and no other branch has any authority to impose limitations,” Dr. Fisher wrote (pdf).
“The Constitution has been interpreted in that manner at times by some Presidents, but never successfully. Such a reading would eliminate the checks and balances that are fundamental to the U.S. Constitution.”
See this April 2, 2008 memorandum prepared by Louis Fisher.
To secure the U.S. bio-infrastructure, maintain global leadership in biotechnology, and safeguard American citizens from emerging threats to their privacy, the federal government must modernize its approach to human genetic and biological data.
To ensure an energy transition that brings broad based economic development, participation, and direct benefits to communities, we need federal policy that helps shape markets. Unfortunately, there is a large gap in understanding of how to leverage federal policy making to support access to capital and credit.
From use to testing to deployment, the scaffolding for responsible integration of AI into high-risk use cases is just not there.
OPM’s new HR 2.0 initiative is entering hostile terrain. Those who have followed federal HR modernization for years desperately want this effort to succeed.