WASHINGTON, June 1 (UPI) -- A bipartisan panel says a national security privilege, which the U.S. government can use to quash lawsuits, should be reformed.
The panel is made up of former officials and legal experts.
Known as the state secrets privilege, the doctrine has its roots in British common law and allows the U.S. government to argue that the disclosure of certain evidence in court may damage national security, effectively ending the litigation.
The panel, set up by the Constitution Project, released a report Thursday.
It recommends that Congress "conduct hearings to investigate the ways in which the state secrets privilege is asserted, and craft statutory language to clarify that judges, not the executive branch, have the final say about whether disputed evidence is subject to the state secrets privilege."
The panel's 41 members include former federal Judge William Sessions, who was FBI director under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton; Philip Heymann and Bruce Fein, who were deputy attorneys general for Clinton and Reagan respectively; Louis Fisher, the leading specialist in constitutional law at the Library of Congress; and David Kay, formerly head of the U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq, and subsequently of the U.S. Iraq Survey Group.
"Unless claims about state secrets evidence are subjected to independent judicial scrutiny, the executive branch is at liberty to violate legal and constitutional rights with impunity and without the public scrutiny that ensures that the government is accountable for its actions," reads the report.
It states judges are too ready to abdicate their responsibility to see the evidence before accepting the government's contention that its disclosure would damage national security.
"By accepting these claims as valid on their face, courts undermine the principle of judicial independence, the adversary process, fairness in the courtroom, and our constitutional system of checks and balances."
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Shaun Waterman, UPI Homeland and National Security Editor
