Common mental disorders: falling through the gap

People with mental illness are more likely than the rest of the population to have physical health problems and to die prematurely. The Lancet Psychiatry Commission on protecting physical health in people with mental illness draws attention to this global inequality

Review, The New Era of Secret Law

In a recent Brennan Center report, The New Era of Secret Law, Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein articulates, examines, and evaluates the claims for and objections to secret law. Under this banner, the report includes any law that is withheld from the public, regardless of whether it may be shared among agencies or with certain members or committees of Congress.” Goitein’s underlying goal is to propose procedural and substantive reforms. Secret Law is a deeply-researched and highly valuable policy brief with an aim of making specific policy recommendations. And readable to boot

Concealing in the Public Interest, or Why We Must Teach Secrecy

Secrecy as the intentional or unintentional concealment of information is the subject of investigation within the humanities, social sciences, journalism, law and legal studies. However, the subject it is not widely taught as a distinct social problem within higher education. In this article, I report personal experience with developing and teaching a graduate level course on a particular type of secrecy, government secrecy, at the School of Information, San Jose State University. This article includes discussion on selecting course materials, creating assignments, and navigating controversial histories. This article also sets the stage to this special issue of Secrecy and Society on the subject of teaching secrecy

The economics of greenhouse gas accumulation: A simulation approach

This article investigates efficient policies against global warming in the case of multiple greenhouse gases. In a dynamic optimization model conditions for an efficient combination of greenhouse gases are derived. The model is empirically specified and adapted to a simulation approach. By various simulation runs, the economics of greenhouse gas accumulation are illuminated; and in particular, it is shown that a CO2-policy alone would most likely lead to an allocation far from efficiency. These results indicate, that policy measures against global warming should allow for substituting between different greenhouse gases. Such a policy would mainly affect the agricultural sector because livestock and intensive farming techniques contribute significantly to the emission of greenhouse gases.

State Secrecy: A Literature Review

What is secrecy? What is a state secret? Which state secrets deserve protection from disclosures? How are state secrets protected from disclosure? In this review, I use these questions as an organizing framework to review the richness of a very disparate, largely US-centric, but also multidisciplinary literature. In doing so, I highlight the social nature of secrecy - that it is a social construct with social effects and consequences - and the need for further research to unveil those rationalities that specific discourses on state secrecy put forward to legitimize the nondisclosure of state secrets

Accounting for secrets

The Soviet dictatorship used secrecy to shield its processes from external scrutiny. A system of accounting for classified documentation assured the protection of secrets. The associated procedures resemble a turnover tax applied to government transactions. There is evidence of both compliance and evasion. The burden of secrecy was multiplied because the system was also secret and so had to account for itself. Unique documentation of a small regional bureaucracy, the Lithuania KGB, is exploited to yield an estimate of the burden. Measured against available benchmarks, the burden looks surprisingly heavy

The Classified Information Procedures Act in the Age of Terrorism: Remodeling CIPA in an Offense-Specific Manner

The Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) sets the balancing point between the government’s interest in preventing disclosure of classified information with a criminal defendant’s right to exculpatory material. Although CIPA was originally drafted with espionage cases in mind, the statute has become more commonly associated with terrorism prosecutions. This contextual shift has disrupted CIPA’s interest-balancing formulation by altering the governmental interests at stake. CIPA’s discovery burdens on the defendant are ordinarily constitutionally justified by the strong countervailing state interest in preserving vital national-security information. This concern is less salient with terrorism defendants, who are unlikely to possess state secrets. Accordingly, those defendants may require further reciprocity in discovery procedures to keep the statute within constitutional parameters. This Note examines the ill effects of CIPA’s contextual shift and proposes a set of amendments to alleviate those concerns. Chiefly, this Note suggests an offense-specific CIPA, whereby the procedural mechanisms of the statute are tailored to the offense charged. The three core recommendations of this Note are (1) inclusion of defense counsel in the discovery process and clearer standards to govern discoverability; (2) a limited and qualified declassification requirement in select Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act cases; and (3) bifurcation of admissibility hearings

Long-term and cross-sectional policy issues in European governments and parliaments. Summary

Dealing with long-term and cross-cutting issues poses a number of challenges to established routines and the organisation of governments and parliaments based on the division of labour: Long-term social development trends and long-term effects of political measures must be identified and taken into account. Political action must be coordinated between a large number of affected departments. A high degree of coordination with social interest groups is necessary if long-term political goals are to be realised. Subject and objective of the study The TAB project, which was commissioned by the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment and started on 5 July 2000, pursued the question of which procedures and forms of institutionalisation (e.g. interdepartmental programmes, creation of specialised scientific institutions, commissions of enquiry, councils of experts, forums for communication between politics and society) are chosen by European parliaments and governments in dealing with long-term and cross-cutting issues in order to meet the challenges mentioned. In addition to a comparison of countries with regard to sustainability policy in Europe, TAB has compiled an inventory of the advisory institutions for technology assessment established in a number of European countries at the national parliaments

Reducing Government Secrecy: Finding What Works

Sunlight is the best disinfectant, Justice Brandeis famously declared, praising publicity as a remedy for corruption. But sunlight is more than that; it is an indispensable precondition of life. And to extend the Brandeis metaphor, sunlight in the form of robust public access to government information is essential to the vitality of democratic governance, even in the absence of corruption. Our political institutions cannot function properly without it