PUBLIC DOCUMENTS SHOULD BE PUBLIC

A while back I reported on the government's new practice of refusing to allow documents to be filed on the public record. In the past the Guantanamo court documents were screened and a few hours or days later the documents were either cleared for public filing or had a few words or sections blackened out and then the document was cleared. Right around the time of the presidential election everything that was filed in the Guantanamo cases was all of a sudden considered "classified" and nothing was ever declassifed by the Department of Justice (DOJ). (I think this was another way of the old DOJ controlling the filings and the new DOJ either not being aware or not challenging.) Today Judge Hogan said the practice must end. Thanks to Judge Hogan for ending a practice that was going to make the job of historians (and was in fact making the job of habeas counsel) that much harder.