5 ms·

> courts must not be allowed to consider matters of great importance under the shroud of secrecy That's his opinion, and nothing more. As it turns out there a

by mpyne 12y ago

> courts must not be allowed to consider matters of great importance under the shroud of secrecy That's his opinion, and nothing more. As it turns out there are many great reasons for allowing courts to consider things under a shroud of secrecy. E.g. deliberations about a warrant to search the home of an accused pedophile. The accused is innocent until proven guilty so the court would have a strong interest in not making such a warrant public (and in fact we screw this up too much already with sex-related cases IMHO). Or in embezzlement cases, having a completely public deliberation about warrants would tip off the crooks ripping off the taxpayers into avoiding the very means of communication intended to be wiretapped.

SoftwareMaven 12y ago
Secret proceedings are very different. Not being able to tell somebody you need a lawyer is very different from not having court records published until later. It is disingenuous to imply they are the same.
- mpyne 12y ago
  > Not being able to tell somebody you need a lawyer is very different from not having court records published until later. It is disingenuous to imply they are the same. Where in any of those gag orders was Levison forbidden from obtaining an attorney, or telling people he was retaining an attorney?
  - fit2rule 12y ago
    If you can't tell your attorney why you need him and under what conditions the case will be prosecuted, then you don't have representation. You have instead, a repressive feudal system of serfhood.
X-Cubed 12y ago
There are many possibilities between completely secret and completely public. In the case of sex offence cases, it's common for the accused to get name suppression, so that only those present in court are aware of their identity. It's still a public trial, involving a jury of citizens. A FISA-type court /could/ operate in a way where a jury made up of members of the public were involved in making the decisions, while being bound by the normal rules of secrecy that require them to not talk about the case outside of the court.

by mpyne 12y ago

SoftwareMaven 12y ago

Secret proceedings are very different. Not being able to tell somebody you need a lawyer is very different from not having court records published until later. It is disingenuous to imply they are the same.

mpyne 12y ago
> Not being able to tell somebody you need a lawyer is very different from not having court records published until later. It is disingenuous to imply they are the same. Where in any of those gag orders was Levison forbidden from obtaining an attorney, or telling people he was retaining an attorney?
- fit2rule 12y ago
  If you can't tell your attorney why you need him and under what conditions the case will be prosecuted, then you don't have representation. You have instead, a repressive feudal system of serfhood.

X-Cubed 12y ago

There are many possibilities between completely secret and completely public. In the case of sex offence cases, it's common for the accused to get name suppression, so that only those present in court are aware of their identity. It's still a public trial, involving a jury of citizens. A FISA-type court /could/ operate in a way where a jury made up of members of the public were involved in making the decisions, while being bound by the normal rules of secrecy that require them to not talk about the case outside of the court.