> Look back at the case I pointed to, United States v. Reynolds.
Reynolds was only ever able to sue because the Federal Tort Claims Act, passed only a few years earlier in 1946, made it possible to sue where before a suit would have been impossible. As I said, it's difficult to make broad claims about the historical scope of state secrets privileges viz-z-viz constitutional rights (the issue in the Wikipedia case) when for most of American history, not to mention English history, there rarely if ever would have been occasion for the state to need to make use of a concept like state secrets. Reynolds is really about the scope of waiver of sovereign immunity. Importantly, there were never any constitutional rights implicated, at least not those of the plaintiff, as they didn't have a constitutional right to sue. I hesitate to say that the government had any constitutional rights as IMO it's better to understand the government's claim of privilege in terms of the power of the court viz-a-viz the government, and the courts deference to sovereign immunity.
> But, as in the 1886 case of Boyd v. United States, the government had and tried to use information. It was only on appeal that it was ruled that information that they had from violations of the Constitution could not be used, and therefore decisions depending on that information had to be reversed.
Body v. United States says "It is equivalent to a compulsory production of papers to make the nonproduction of them a confession of the allegations which it is pretended they will prove." As I said, that's a matter of self-incrimination, which while not as ancient as rules regarding property was a well established and core constitutional principle in English law. Interpretation and application of the right against self-incrimination has always been tricky (see, e.g., passwords today), so it's not at all surprising a trial court would rule one way and an appellate court another. Similarly, the dividing line between criminal cases (where a right against self-incrimination applies) and civil cases (where it does not) has likewise never been simple and clear. Furthermore, I said, "Application of an exclusionary rule disconnected from this simple, logical application of traditional rights didn't come about until the past century or two." IOW, the evolution of modern exclusionary rules was an incremental process, both in case law as well as conceptually. There's no limit to how far back one can claim to extend the logic of modern exclusionary rules. But past "a century or two" (and I'm being charitable) it's extremely difficult to make sense of case law using modern legal concepts.
> As for your passing comment about Roe v. Wade, that is disingenuous to the point of outright dishonesty. The reason why that decision is currently on shaky legal ground is that decades of concerted effort have resulted in the appointment of judges chosen for their politics over the quality of their legal reasoning, specifically to overturn that decision.
Are we talking law or politics here? If we stick to law, the legal argument against Roe v. Wade is fundamentally about the existence and nature of constitutional privacy rights. (Or at least it was for most of the past 50 years. See the conservative arguments against Lawrence v. Texas. Now younger conservative jurists have grown up having internalized the concept and many of the implications of privacy rights, which is why they've pivoted to emphasizing fetal rights.)
You assume too much if you a) think I fundamentally disagree with Roe v. Wade or b) believe that I'm an originalist who would not accept the legitimacy of a reframing of constitutional law around the concept of privacy rights. However, it's very difficult to understand how we got where we are today, and where we might go tomorrow, if we insist (like many conservatives do) that there's always and only one correct way to interpret and apply constitutional law, textual or otherwise.