Function
The purpose of the state secrets privilege is to prevent courts from revealing state secrets in the course of civil litigation (in criminal cases, the Classified Information Procedures Act serves the same purpose). The government may intervene in any civil suit, including when it is not a party to the litigation, to ask the court to exclude state secrets evidence. While the courts may examine such evidence closely, in practice they generally defer to the Executive Branch. Once the court has agreed that evidence is subject to the state secrets privilege, it is excluded from the litigation. Often, as a practical matter, the plaintiff cannot continue the suit without the privileged information, and drops the case. Recently, courts have been more inclined to dismiss cases outright, if the subject matter of the case is a state secret.
Read more about this topic: State Secrets Privilege
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“The press and politicians. A delicate relationship. Too close, and danger ensues. Too far apart and democracy itself cannot function without the essential exchange of information. Creative leaks, a discreet lunch, interchange in the Lobby, the art of the unattributable telephone call, late at night.”
—Howard Brenton (b. 1942)
“The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“The mother’s and father’s attitudes toward the child correspond to the child’s own needs.... Mother has the function of making him secure in life, father has the function of teaching him, guiding him to cope with those problems with which the particular society the child has been born into confronts him.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)