In 2017, the 11 judges serving on the secretive U.S. surveillance court convened for a rare occasion.

Drawn from federal trial courts across the country, the judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court were accustomed to working alone in weeklong shifts reviewing U.S. applications for wiretaps. But an appeal demanding wider public access to the surveillance court’s opinions brought them together as a full court, providing what U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer celebrated as a “rare and wonderful opportunity to wrestle together over some weighty legal principles and issues.”