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"Executive privilege (Government information) United States."
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Executive Privilege
Executive Privilege -called \"the definitive contemporary
work on the subject\" by the Journal of Politics -is widely
considered the best in-depth history and analysis of executive
privilege and its relation to the proper scope and limits of
presidential power. This fourth edition is revised and updated to
include the two Obama administrations and the first three years of
the Trump administration. The new edition includes President
Obama's failure to live up to the high expectations of his campaign
promises, and, President Trump's controversies, including the
investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the
proposed addition of a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, and
the ongoing inquiry into White House security clearances. \"For an
American people who (apparently) must be their president's keeper,
this book is essential reading.†- Rhetoric &
Public Affairs
eBook
Presidents' secrets : the use and abuse of hidden power
Ever since the nation's most important secret meeting--the Constitutional Convention--presidents have struggled to balance open, accountable government with necessary secrecy in military affairs and negotiations. For the first one hundred and twenty years, a culture of open government persisted, but new threats and technology have long since shattered the old bargains. Today, presidents neither protect vital information nor provide the open debate Americans expect.
Book
Blacked out : government secrecy in the information age
Nearly forty years ago the US Congress passed the landmark Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) giving the public the right to government documents. This 'right to know' has been used over the past decades to challenge overreaching Presidents and secretive government agencies. The example of transparency in government has served as an example to nations around the world spawning similar statutes in fifty-nine countries. This 2006 book examines the evolution of the move toward openness in government. It looks at how technology has aided the disclosure and dissemination of information. The author tackles the question of whether the drive for transparency has stemmed the desire for government secrecy and discusses how many governments ignore or frustrate the legal requirements for the release of key documents. Blacked Out is an important contribution during a time where profound changes in the structure of government are changing access to government documents.
eBook
Presidential secrecy and the law
As seen on The Daily Show, July 24
State secrets, warrantless investigations and wiretaps, signing statements, executive privilege—the executive branch wields many tools for secrecy. Since the middle of the twentieth century, presidents have used myriad tactics to expand and maintain a level of executive branch power unprecedented in this nation’s history.
Most people believe that some degree of governmental secrecy is necessary. But how much is too much? At what point does withholding information from Congress, the courts, and citizens abuse the public trust? How does the nation reclaim rights that have been controlled by one branch of government?
With Presidential Secrecy and the Law, Robert M. Pallitto and William G. Weaver attempt to answer these questions by examining the history of executive branch efforts to consolidate power through information control. They find the nation’s democracy damaged and its Constitution corrupted by staunch information suppression, a process accelerated when “black sites,” “enemy combatants,” and “ghost detainees” were added to the vernacular following the September 11, 2001, terror strikes.
Tracing the current constitutional dilemma from the days of the imperial presidency to the unitary executive embraced by the administration of George W. Bush, Pallitto and Weaver reveal an alarming erosion of the balance of power. Presidential Secrecy and the Law will be the standard in presidential powers studies for years to come.
eBook
A Realpolitik for Presidential Health
The health and fitness of United States presidents has been a matter of concern since the Constitutional Convention. Several United States presidents, including James Madison, James Garfield, and Woodrow Wilson, were significantly impaired during portions of their tenure. Yet how to address this issue has proved both ethically and politically challenging, increasingly so during our nation’s current period of elevated polarization. This essay reviews the history of presidential impairment and the range of proposals that have been offered to address it. Ultimately, the essay argues that any effort to require the release of medical records or to evaluate the president while in office is likely to prove ineffective and politically unworkable, but also that providing the public with more medical information about candidates and presidents is unlikely to prove useful to voters in rendering their decisions.
Journal Article
Constitutional Showdowns
Posner and Vermeule put some theoretical backbone into the idea of a constitutional showdown by attempting to give a usable definition of the idea, analyzing the circumstances under which showdowns will or will not occur, and offering some normative observations about whether the American constitutional systems tends to produce too many or too few showdowns, and whether the showdowns it does produce occur under socially optimal circumstances. They argue that the observed rate and distribution of showdowns will in all likelihood diverge from the socially optimal rate and distribution of showdowns.
Journal Article
Keep It Secret, Keep It Safe: An Empirical Analysis of the State Secrets Doctrine
The state secrets doctrine provides both an evidentiary privilege and a categorical bar against litigation that implicates national security concerns. The U.S. government has invoked the state secrets doctrine to insulate certain programs, including rendition and surveillance operations, from oversight by the courts. Despite a surge of interest in the state secrets doctrine after September 11, 2001, few scholars have used statistical analysis to evaluate courts' treatment of the issue. This Note employs a dataset containing over 300 state secrets cases—larger and more complete than in any previous statistical study—to explore state secrets jurisprudence. I find that the state secrets doctrine has been asserted much more frequently after September 11 than it was before. However, in cases to which the government is a party, courts tend to uphold and deny those assertions at roughly the same rate. In litigation between private parties, courts have mostly avoided ruling on state secrets issues since September 11, a dramatic change from the pre-September 11 era. I also identify and analyze two other important trends: First, courts appear to be more skeptical of state secrets claims in Fourth Amendment cases than in most other types of cases. Second, criminal defendants have particular difficulty in overcoming state secrets privilege claims, especially after September 11. Through case analysis, I conclude that the data alone reveal no obvious abuse of the state secrets doctrine by either the executive or the judiciary. Nonetheless, the frequency with which courts uphold the government's invocation of the state secrets privilege, and the circumstances under which they do so, suggest that the state secrets doctrine often conflicts with some of our most fundamental democratic principles.
Journal Article