Tuesday, November 15, 2005

~ fear, secrecy and the closure of divorce records ~

The privacy and security epidemic is now infecting U.S. courts, once broadly agreed to be an accessible institution open to the entire public. The attempts by wealthy individuals to seal their financial records in divorce cases, or to close court proceedings, has been met with mixed results. Tresa Baldas reports in Sealing Divorce Records for the Sake of ... Corporations that businesses are petitioning courts to remove financial data from the divorce files of their executives under the spurious claim that disclosure could harm the company.

I sense that the infectiousness of the fear of threats to our security lurking around every corner may have been contracted by certain judges. Dr. Marc Siegel points out in his book, False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear that the fear frenzy leads us to wildly exaggerate individual or broad societal susceptibility to threats generated by nature or humans, and to undervalue the more likely dangers. Hopefully, judges can take a more, well, judicial view, and consider the consequences to a democratic society of secret court proceedings.


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