>but what about from a public records perspective? It still feels like the precedents that have been established inside the US legal system should be publicly available without restrictions.

Yes, I agree with that. And in many cases (but not all), they are - court documents are generally available for nominal processing fees, though there's a long way to go before I'd say this is all truly "publicly available without [unnecessary] restrictions".

With some notable exceptions like FISA, I don't think most of the secrecy is out of a desire to conceal law from citizens. It's largely the fact that our legal system is shockingly low-tech and hasn't yet caught up to what technology now allows.