Course | Columbia Law School

This seminar will explore the landscape of laws, policies, and norms that regulate government secrecy in the United States. We will begin by reviewing general philosophical and constitutional arguments for and against official secrecy. We will then turn to the framework laws that organize secret-keeping and disclosure in the federal executive branch, including the classification system and the Freedom of Information Act, and to the judicial doctrines of executive privilege and state secrets privilege. We will next study the use of secrecy in a few especially controversial areas, such as targeting and surveillance, and the challenges posed by whistleblowers and "leakers." We will conclude by considering how the U.S. secrecy system compares to those of several other countries and how it might be reformed.