Talk:State Secrets Protection Act

What does this bill say / what would it do?

What does this bill say and how would it reform the exercise of the state secrets privilege? The article doesn't say. This would be nice to have in an encyclopedia article about the bill. 208.2.205.162 (talk) 13:08, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

An excerpt from the press release by Senator Kennedy that the article refers to:

The Act requires courts to examine the evidence for which the privilege is claimed, in order to determine whether the executive branch has validly invoked the privilege. The court must look at the actual evidence, not just government affidavits about the evidence, and make its own assessment of whether information is covered by the privilege. Only after a court has considered the evidence and found that it provides a valid legal defense can it dismiss a claim on state secrets grounds.

I am not a lawyer. My layperson understanding of the legislation is that it allows the judicial brach to securely evaluate the executive branch's claim of state secret privilege as it relates to civil cases against the US government. My understanding is that before this legislation, the government can and did claim that evidence relating to the civil suit would contain national secrets to get cases dismissed without anyone outside of the executive branch evaluating whether the claim is true or not. In fact the case that sets the precedent of state secret privilege, United_States_v._Reynolds, was itself an abuse since the supposedly secret crash report has now been declassified and did not contain any secrets. I do not feel comfortable adding a summary to the article. Someone more lawyerly than me who really knows what they're talking about should do it. DavidCreswick (talk) 23:02, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

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