In theory, congressional oversight should stand in for public scrutiny. But the system breaks down in practice. Executive officials sometimes refuse to provide legal interpretations to oversight committees. Even when they have access, lawmakers often fail to push back against interpretations that go too far. After all, they have little incentive to take on the national security establishment when their constituents are not even aware that a problem exists.

The costs imposed by secret law are for the most part unjustified. National security frequently requires secrecy in the details of intelligence or military operations. Rules and regulations, however, establish general standards for conduct; they do not normally include details like dates, times, targets or sources. As for opinions that apply the law in specific cases, if their authors anticipated disclosure, they could write in a manner that minimized the entanglement of law and fact. The sensitive information could then be redacted without obscuring the legal analysis.

There have been recent notable steps to rein in secret law. In 2015, Congress passed a law requiring more transparency in FISA court opinions, and the office of the director of national intelligence has published all of its “Intelligence Community Directives” online. These changes are proof of concept, as the law in these areas has become far more accessible without harm to national security.

We should now build on this progress. Decisions about what can be kept secret should be made by an interagency group rather than a single official. The standard for secrecy should be more specific and more demanding than the current, vague yardstick of potential harm to national security. Agencies should maintain public indexes, including certain basic information about each secret law, to enable challenges and an assessment of how the system is working. And there should be a firm limit on how long any law may remain secret. The president should order these changes, with Congress conducting public oversight to ensure their faithful implementation.

These reforms might not end secret law altogether. But they would help ensure that secret law was the exception, not the expectation, in national security matters. In this election year, as we honor our right to govern ourselves, those in power and those seeking it should affirm that a regime of secret law has no place in a democracy.