Secret law

Since the 1970s, National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAAs), intelligence authorization acts (IAAs), and Department of Defense appropriations acts (DODAAs) have usually included secret law in the form of classified addenda. Since about 2015, the branches of the United States federal government have accused one another of creating secret law. Journalists, scholars, and anti-secrecy activists have also made similar allegations. Scholarly analysis has shown that secret law is present in all three branches. One scholar, Professor Dakota Rudesill, recommends that the country affirmatively decide whether to tolerate secret law, and proposes principles for governing it, including: public law's supremacy over secret law; no secret criminal law; public notification of creation of secret law; presumptive sunset and publication dates; and availability of all secret law to Congress. The Brennan Center for Justice includes in the category of secret law in the United States classified opinions of the Executive Office of Legal Counsel, described as "authoritative legal interpretations that have the same legal force as the statutes they interpreted"; taken by the Bush administration following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The Patriot Act has been referred to as having secret interpretations. ==Secret rules in UK public places==

In the United Kingdom, many open places freely accessible by the public are actually privately owned public spaces (POPS). Information on ownership is considered confidential, and not provided either by the owners, or by local councils that have the information. As in any private property the owner may require visitors to abide by specified rules; but people freely accessing the place are not informed of the rules, which may nevertheless be enforced by security guards. Typical prohibitions which do not apply to genuinely public spaces include protesting and photography. A key exception to this is any public space that has an agreement in place to be compliant with the Public London Charter which, since 2021, is a requirement for London planning authorities in the planning process. == Literature ==

Secret laws and their negative effects are described in Franz Kafka's novel Der Prozess (The Trial). == See also ==