State secrets privilege

In U.S. law, with equivalents in some other countries, the state secrets principle is a legal doctrine that allows evidence from being made public during trials, if the government asserts that its disclosure would threaten the national security. Some interpretations regard it as absolute, and derived from the President's Article II authority as Commander-in-Chief, claiming that the Constitution did not intend the courts to be a check and balance on the unique Presidential authority to wage war. Other interpretations see no exemptions from a basic Constitutional concept of checks and balances.

The Supreme Court of the United States, in March 2009, declined to review a recent case, el-Masri v. Tenet in which the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the doctrine in an appeal.

There have been various proposals and case-by-case mechanisms to find intermediate positions, such as giving defense attorneys, but not necessarily the defendant, access to some of the classified information in the prosecution case.