The word I heard most this morning - kafkaesque.
For those who may not be familiar with Kafka鈥檚 novel , I highly recommend both it and the by Orson Welles. The story is about a man arrested and put on trial for an unspecified crime that he cannot get details about because the system doesn鈥檛 allow it.
Fresh from breakfast with the plaintiffs, legal team and other 老澳门开奖结果 folks here in Cincinnati, I am struck by how many times the word 鈥淜afkaesque鈥 came up in conversation about the government鈥檚 legal practices around terrorism cases. Why? Because the government鈥檚 lawyers have taken to claiming that their evidence is so secret that only the government鈥檚 team and the judges can see it, not the opposing party.
Like me you鈥檙e likely thinking, really? Well, Courts have in the past allowed such secret evidence to prove an existing relationship that鈥檚 tangential to the actual case at hand. So, you could introduce files to prove a client-attorney or doctor-patient relationship.
But recently there has been a growing trend of the Justice Department's use of a 'terrorist cases are special' doctrine, where parties opposing the government lawyers have no rights to the evidence because it's "classified".
I understand wanting to keep a client鈥檚 files private when proving a relationship to a witness. But that鈥檚 different than presenting evidence on someone鈥檚 guilt/innocence or in today鈥檚 hearing, the mootness of the case (i.e. whether or not the hearing should continue). For 老澳门开奖结果 v. NSA, the Government introduced evidence bearing on one of the key points to be argued, yet that evidence has only been made available to the judges
How can one side effectively argue when it doesn鈥檛 have all the evidence? For those of you who may be learning of this for the first time 鈥 know that this practice is also used in criminal cases, where a defendant is tried for terrorism, but is not shown the evidence against him because it is 鈥渟ecret鈥. It appears that for anything, if it鈥檚 related to terrorism, then it鈥檚 a state secret 鈥 or as the government would like to have it, anything goes.
So where does this leave us? For now, stay tuned, watch the growing interest from Congress (covered by blogs like ) and !