Court Opinion

ID: 9426369
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:17:41.901525+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:00.573439
License: Public Domain

Me. Chief Justice Burger,
dissenting.
If “hard cases make bad law,” unusual cases surely have the potential to make even worse law. Today, on the basis of a highly unusual request for information about a unique governmental process, a military academy honor system, the Court interprets definitively a substantial and very significant part of a major federal statute governing the balance between the public's “right to know” and the privacy of the individual citizen.
In my view, the Court makes this case carry too much jurisprudential baggage. Consequently, the basic congressional intent to protect a reasonable balance between the availability of information in the custody of the Government and the particular individual’s right of privacy is undermined. In addition, district courts are burdened with a task Congress could not have intended for them.
(1) This case does not compel us to decide whether the summaries at issue here are "personnel files” or whether files so categorized are beyond the proviso of Exemption 6 that disclosure constitute “a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” Even assuming, argu-endo, that the Government must show that the summaries are subject to the foregoing standard, it is quite *383clear, in my view, that the disclosure of the material at issue here constitutes such an invasion, no matter what excision process is attempted by a federal judge.
The Court correctly notes that Congress, in enacting Exemption 6, intended to strike “a proper balance between the protection of the individual’s right of privacy and the preservation of the public’s right to Government information by excluding those kinds of files the disclosure of which might harm the individual.” H. R. Rep.*No. 1497, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 11 (1966). Having acknowledged the necessity of such a balance, however, the Court, in my view, blandly ignores and thereby frustrates the congressional intent by refusing to weigh, realistically, the grave consequences implicit in release of this particular information, in any form, against the relatively inconsequential claim of “need” for the material alleged in the complaint.
The opinions of this Court have long recognized the opprobrium which both the civilian and the military segments of our society attribute to allegations of dishonor among commissioned officers of our Armed Forces. See, e. g., Parker v. Levy, 417 U. S. 733, 744 (1974), quoting Orloff v. Willoughby, 345 U. S. 83, 91 (1953). The stigma which our society imposes on the individual who has accepted such a position of trust1 and abused it is not erasable, in any realistic sense, by the passage of time *384or even by subsequent exemplary conduct. The absence of the broken sword, the torn epaulets, and the Rogue’s March from our military ritual does not lessen the indeli-bility of the stigma. Significantly, cadets and midshipmen — “inchoate officers” 2 — have traditionally been held to the same high standards and subjected to the same stigma as commissioned officers when involved in matters with overtones of dishonor.3 Indeed, the mode of punitive separation as the result of court-martial is the same for both officers and cadets — dismissal. United States v. Ellman, 9 U. S. C. M. A. 549, 26 C. M. R. 329 (1958). Moreover, as the Court of Appeals noted, it is unrealistic to conclude, in most cases, that a finding of “not guilty” or “discretion” exonerates the cadet in anything other than the purely technical and legal sense of the term.
Admittedly, the Court requires that, before release, these documents be subject to in camera inspection with power of excising parts. But, as the Court admits, any such attempt to “sanitize” these summaries would still leave the very distinct possibility that the individual would still be identifiable and thereby injured. In light of Congress’ recent manifest concern in the Privacy Act of 1974, 5 U. S. C. § 552a (1970 ed.; Supp. Y), for “governmental respect for the privacy of citizens . . . ,” S. Rep. No. 93-1183, p. 1 (1974), it is indeed difficult to attribute to Congress a willingness to subject an individual citizen to the risk of possible severe damage to his reputation simply to permit law students to invade individual privacy to prepare a law journal article. Its definition of a “clearly unwarranted invasion of personal *385privacy” as equated with “protect [ing] an individual’s private affairs from unnecessary public scrutiny . . . S. Rep. No. 813, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 9 (1965) (emphasis supplied), would otherwise be rendered meaningless.
(2) Moreover, excision would not only be ineffectual in accomplishing the legislative intent of protecting an individual’s affairs from unnecessary public scrutiny, but it would place an intolerable burden upon a district court which, in my view, Congress never intended to inflict. Although the 1974 amendments to the Freedom of Information Act require that “[a]ny reasonably segregable portion of a record . . . ,” 5 U. S. C. § 552 (b) (1970 ed., Supp. V), otherwise exempt, be provided, there is nothing in the legislative history of the original Act or its amendments which would require a district court to construct, in effect, a new document. Yet, the excision process mandated here could only require such a sweeping reconstruction of the material that the end product would constitute an entirely new document. No provision of the Freedom of Information Act contemplates a federal district judge acting as a “rewrite editor” of the original material.
If the Court’s holding is indeed a fair reflection of congressional intent, we are confronted with a “split-personality” legislative reaction, by the conflict between a seeming passion for privacy and a comparable passion for needless invasions of privacy.
Accordingly, I would reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

 As the Court noted in Orloff v. Willoughby, 345 U. S., at 91: “The President’s commission [uses the words] 'reposing special trust and confidence in the patriotism, valor, fidelity and abilities’ of the appointee. . . An officer may be punitively dismissed (the equivalent of a dishonorable discharge) when found guilty of any offense by a general court-martial, regardless of the limitations placed on the punishment for the offense when committed by enlisted personnel. Manual for Courts-Martial ¶ 126d (1969). See generally United States v. Goodwin, 5 U. S. C. M. A. 647, 18 C. M. R. 271 (1955).

 7 Op. Atty. Gen. 332 (1855).

 Article 133, Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U. S. C. § 933, states, for example:
“Any commissioned officer, cadet, or midshipman who is convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.” (Emphasis supplied.)