Secret 9/11 case before high court

[Sticky]

The justices consider a petition for a case with no public record.

By Warren Richey

MIAMI – It's the case that doesn't exist. Even though two different federal courts have conducted hearings and issued rulings, there has been no public record of any action. No documents are available. No files. No lawyer is allowed to speak about it. Period.

Yet this seemingly phantom case does exist - and is now headed to the US Supreme Court in what could produce a significant test of a question as old as the Star Chamber, abolished in 17th-century England: How far should a policy of total secrecy extend into a system of justice?


Secrecy has been a key Bush administration weapon in the war on terrorism. Attorney General John Ashcroft warns that mere tidbits of information that seem innocuous about the massive Sept. 11 investigation could help Al Qaeda carry out new attacks.

snip:

The case is significant because it could force a close examination of secret tactics that are apparently becoming increasingly common under Attorney General Ashcroft. In September 2001, he ordered that all deportation hearings with links to the Sept. 11 investigation be conducted secretly. In addition, the Justice Department has acknowledged that at least nine criminal cases related to the Sept. 11 investigation were being cloaked in total secrecy.

more:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1030/p01s02-usju.html

[Catshrink]

1. This is really scary.

What if they decide, in total secrecy, to overturn the Bill of Rights? Or to cancel the next Presidential election? What are the rules of these secret cases? What cases are considered that "dangerous to national security" that they need to "not exist"?

This just totally creeps me out.

[janekat]

2. No kidding.... What has this country turned into?

n/t

[7th_Sephiroth]

3. one about to go

into civil war, if they rule for bush like that

[kalian]

4. WTF

secret courts...secret decisions. Public not being allowed to know...
:wtf:
Where the hell do we live in? Cuba? North Korea?

[Festivito]

5. My scare to confidence ratio runs 5-4. Not good. nt.

[DulceDecorum]

6. The Case of Ignatz Mezei

Who was Ignatz Mezei and why should you care?
This man, who seems to have led a life of unrelieved insignificance, must have been astonished to find himself suddenly putting the Government of the United States in such fear that it was afraid to tell him why it was afraid of him.
Shaughnessy v. Mezei, 345 U.S. 206 (1953) (Jackson, J., dissenting)
http://internet.ggu.edu/university_library/if/Mezei.html


It is a case that reverberates today as the legal fallout from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, makes its way through the courts. Among the links across half a century: William H. Rehnquist, then a young law clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court and now its 79-year-old chief justice.
The Mezei case is being cited by both sides as Rehnquist's high court prepares to decide, as soon as Monday, whether to take up the cases of two groups of detainees at the special prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Like Mezei, they are non-U.S. citizens who are being held indefinitely, without charge, at water's edge. They, too, are seeking the right to confront their accusers in U.S. courts.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-ignatz1nov01,1,6373436.story?coll=la-home-todays-times