In March of 2022, the Supreme Court addressed the “state secrets privilege,” which the government has repeatedly invoked in the post-9/11 era. This privilege is analogous to the common law attorney/client privilege, but courts have recently grounded it in presidential authority under Article II of the Constitution to prevent the disclosure of information dangerous to national security. In United States v. Husayn, a divided Court upheld the state secrets privilege to prevent the official disclosure of a fact that was no longer in any sense a secret. The majority and the dissenters disagreed on whether the Court struck the right balance between national security and the need for transparency to remedy past governmental wrongdoing.

Pohlman, H. L. United States v. Husayn, aka [Abu] Zubaydah on State Secrets in the Post-9/11 Era. In SCOTUS 2022:
Major Decisions and Developments of the US Supreme Court, edited by Morgan Marietta, 151-159. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-18468-0_14

Harry Pohlman is a professor of Political Science at Dickinson College.

For more information on the published version, visit Springer's Website. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-18468-0_14

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