November 04, 2022

S2E37: Mar-a-Lago Documents - History of Classified Information & Relative Powerlessness of U.S. Courts & Congress In National Security Matters

1 hour 4 minutes

Can a U.S. president declassify a document by merely thinking it?

My guest is Heidi Kitrosser, Professor of Law at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. Professor Kitrosser is an expert on the constitutional law of federal government secrecy and on separation of powers and free speech law… more broadly. She is the author of the following book: Reclaiming Accountability: Transparency, Executive Power, and the U.S. Constitution, which was awarded the 2014 Chicago-Kent College of Law / Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize.

She is on the steering committee of a new initiative – the Free Expression Legal Network (FELN) spearheaded by Yale’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic and the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press

She not only tackles the above question head-on, but she also gets into the history of classified information (e.g., Nixon's executive orders), and analyzes the culpability of the Judicial and Legislative branches of our government in giving the Executive branch more or less a free rein when it comes to classified information.

To learn more about Professor Kitrosser, you can visit her academic homepage.

In addition, below is a link to a recent podcast that is relevant to our current news:

S2E27: U.S. Election Violence, Electoral College & Minority Winners, Professor Edward Foley

I hope you enjoy these episodes.

Adel

Host of the History Behind News podcast

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🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Attribution for episode's artwork image: "Classified documents with and without cover sheets found by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during its search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022." Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information_in_the_United_States. Public Domain image.

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