Absolutely it's a possibility. The system we have has been sanctioned. Its constitutionality has been approved so far, subject to what the Supreme Court will say. But there could be other ways of trying to balance fairness and national security considerations, and certainly giving that kind of role to a security-cleared counsel would be a possibility.
As Mr. Telegdi said, this is something that currently is in practice in Britain. One could say it affords more fairness. That's a judgment call parliamentarians will have to make. I will say this, though; it is absolutely a possibility.
On the question of whether judges are comfortable or not in the inquisitorial type of process that we have, we have a variety of comments by trial judges on this point, but at the end of the day this raises questions about judicial independence.
For sure the Supreme Court, when it heard the cases in June, was interested in the fairness of deciding without fully disclosing the government's case. That was one concern or line of questioning that the court had.
Another line of questions had to do with judicial independence. Even if it's fair to ask the court to have this role, does it impinge on judicial independence to ask that of a judge? These questions are before the court.
A special advocate could conceivably address these questions. I will just say on special advocates and their use in Britain that they've not been considered or felt after practice to be a panacea. Obviously, even if you have a special advocate, there have to be limits or parameters around roles—concerning the communications between the special advocate and the individual once the information has been disclosed to a special advocate—which mean that there are limitations that can never bring that kind of process to the standard of criminal trials. In part for these reasons, some of the special advocates who were used actually withdrew from their role because of concerns with this.
So it's a possibility, but it's not a panacea.