The Arrival Of Secret Law
by Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News,
Volume 2004, Issue No. 100.
November 14, 2004.

Americans can now be obligated to comply with legally-binding regulations that are unknown to them, and that indeed they are forbidden to know.

This is not some dismal Eastern European allegory. It is part of a continuing transformation of American government that is leaving it less open, less accountable and less susceptible to rational deliberation as a vehicle for change.

Harold C. Relyea once wrote an article entitled “The Coming of Secret Law” (Government Information Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 2, 1988) that electrified readers (or at least one reader) with its warning about increased executive branch reliance on secret presidential directives and related instruments.

Back in the 1980s when that article was written, secret law was still on the way. Now it is here.

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