The Lawfare Podcast: Christina Koningisor on Secrecy Creep

Jen Patja, Alan Z. Rozenshtein, Christina Koningisor
Tuesday, January 4, 2022, 12:00 PM

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

Government secrecy is pervasive when it comes to national security and foreign affairs, and it’s becoming more and more common for state and even local governments to invoke government secrecy rationales that in the past, only the president of the United States and the national intelligence community were able to claim. While some of the secrecy is no doubt necessary to ensure that police investigations aren't compromised and state and local officials are getting candid advice from their staff, government secrecy directly threatens government transparency and thus democratic accountability. Alan Rozenshtein spoke about these issues with Christina Koningisor, a law professor at the University of Utah and the author of “Secrecy Creep” a recently published article in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, along with the Lawfare post summarizing her work.


Jen Patja is the editor and producer of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of leaders in Virginia by promoting constitutional literacy, critical thinking, and civic engagement. She is the former Deputy Director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier and has been a freelance editor for over 20 years.
Alan Z. Rozenshtein is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, a senior editor at Lawfare, and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, he served as an Attorney Advisor with the Office of Law and Policy in the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland.
Christina Koningisor is an Associate Professor of Law at U.C. Law San Francisco. She previously served as a media lawyer, and her scholarship focuses on constitutional law, media law, and the law of information access and government transparency. She teaches courses on constitutional law, civil procedure, and the law of government secrecy.

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