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The state secret privilege doctrine in US law and its use in the fight against terrorism:

a protection of national security? a danger for public liberties.

When talking about Human Rights and the United States, many authors would talk of ‘American exceptionalism’. This expression refers to the idea that the United States of America (hereafter US) have a troubled relationship to Human Rights (hereafter HR). On the one hand, they see themselves as having the messianic duty to spread Human Rights in the world, including through international instruments that should be binding on as many countries as possible. On the other hand, they tend to consider that their own rules as regards HR are above international norms. This leads to a double standard in the application of HR: there are the American people and the others; there are national norms and the others. It is in that context that the state secret privilege doctrine must be read.
To define briefly this doctrine, it is that according to which some information that could endanger national security should not be divulged during a trial, especially in the field of war and foreign affairs.
Before explaining thoroughly the extent of that doctrine, it is necessary to dress a quick catalogue of the different norms that may apply in the right to justice and limitations to it in the US legal system.
First of all, Constitutional norms both protect and limit the Judicial power through the system of checks and balances. The three powers belong to different institutions: the Legislative Power is in the hands of the Congress, the Executive Power is in the hands of the President and the Judiciary is in the hands of judges of the Supreme Court and inferior courts. It is to be noted that “Congressmen and executive and judicial officers shall all be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support the Constitution”, which sets them all at a level of trust and responsibility