A state secret or executive privilege is often claimed in the interest of national security, thereby foreclosing any
disclosure in civil or criminal cases. What recourse is available to those individuals whose injury resulted from
government policy related to national security matters? What, if any, additional recourses should be available?
The State secrets privilege is a common-law privilege that allows the head of an executive department to
refuse to produce evidence in a court case. The reason is that the evidence that can be presented is secret
information and that it might harm the foreign relation interests or the national security if disclosed (Morgan,
2018). When the State Secrets Privilege is involved, the government must submit an affidavit claiming that any
of the court proceedings is likely to risk the disclosure of secrets that threaten the national security and then
ask the court to dismiss the suit the said grounds. It can also foreclose any exposure in criminal or civil cases.

This law privilege originated in England, where the law seems to be allowing the queen or the king the “Crown
Privilege” that grants the monarch the absolute right to refuse to share the information with the courts or the
country’s parliament. It was the Supreme Court of the United States who borrowed the state secrets privilege
from the Duncan standard at the time of the Cold War (Venue, 2017). The court did so without discussing the
differences between balances and checks and England’s system where the parliament is all-powerful.
Suppose an individual is involved in any illegal activity. It violates the principle of separation of the powers for
allowing the individual to control what is admitted into the evidence during the trial adjudicating the same
action. By refusing to accept evidence of these activity types unless it is officially acknowledged by the party
interested in excluding it, Duncan Halkin’s rule allows the individual to undue control indirectly. It is a program
that is widely believed to be violating the federal statute as well as the Bill of Rights (Trenga, 2018). Given the
current state of law, there is individual recourse available to those whose injury resulted from the government
policy related to national security matters. It is to mention that recourse is the right of a holder to recover
against any prior endorser who is secondarily liable. The individual who is harmed or affected by government
policy related to national security would be given all the necessary help in both financial and physical terms
that the individual would need to overcome the situation. The state secrets privilege undermines the idea of an
independent judiciary. It contradicts the main idea of the judicial review that is independent to judges that make
an independent evaluation of all the related facts and, at the same time, essentially allow the executive branch
to dictate the federal
courts about the cases they can and cannot hear.
It is important to remember that the state secrets privilege could be overturned at any point in time by the
Supreme Court or Congress. Any push for ending this relic’s usage must begin with educating the other people
regarding the Bush administration’s abuse of the state secrets privilege. The defenders of the state secrets
privilege seem to be justifying the same with “greater good” arguments like the injustice in the individual case is
outweighed by the greater good of protecting the national security. The government compensates any harm to
the individual in saving national security by providing them with monetary help in most cases (Dwyer, 2014). It
is also seen that some members of the individual’s family are provided with job opportunities under the
government sector as an act of compensation. However, this argument ignores another important “greater
good” idea: the greater good is served using denying the individual trump cars, which would allow it to hide
easily and cover up the abuses of power done to them.
It is State Secrets Privilege that enables the federal government to resist the court-ordered disclosure of the
details and information at the time of litigation if there is reasonable danger or chances that such exposure
would negatively influence the national security of the United States. Given the current state of the law in the
country, compensations are made to the individuals whose injury is resulted from the government policy about
the matters of national security. However, there needs to be additional recourses like national respect that
should be given to the individual or his/her family and free education for their current and next generations