Ben Wittes has a statement from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights indicating they will not be appealing Judge John Bates' decision dismissing their lawsuit challenging the Obama administration's targeted killing program. They had filed suit on behalf of Nasser al-Awlaki, the father of American born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, in order to enjoin the U.S. government from killing him unless he posed an imminent threat.
After consultation with our client, the decision has been made not to further pursue this case in court.
CCR and the ACLU continue to be deeply troubled by the government's claim of unreviewable authority to carry out the targeted killing of any American, anywhere, whom the president deems to be a threat to the nation. The executive's claimed right to act as prosecutor, judge and executioner dangerously undermines the rule of law and the protection of human rights here and abroad. We continue to believe that the judiciary has a crucial role to play both in setting the standards under which the government uses lethal force against its own citizens, and in ensuring that those standards are complied with.
We will continue to press the administration to be transparent about its policy of targeted killing outside of war zones, and to constrain its actions according to the Constitution and international law.
One of the big obstacles for the ACLU/CCR was that it was filed on behalf of a man whose son is, at this point, the most high-profile target since Osama bin Laden. Because al-Awlaki is so deeply unsympathetic, and because he frequently engages in exhortations to violence, American national security officials have been comfortable publicly identifying him as a target. As a result, the government could credibly, from Bates' point of view, argue that al-Awlaki could avail himself of the U.S. court system if he so chose. The paradox is that to know you're on the "kill list," you have to be so public about your views that the U.S. will name you without reservation. If you aren't as infamous, the U.S. won't name you and there's no way to know you're on the list, and therefore no way to show that you want to avail yourself of the American legal system in order to prevent yourself from being killed.
Even if the suit had ultimately failed, it still would have shed light on the process by which our government makes the decision to kill American citizens without due process outside of a recognized zone of military combat. Whether you support the targeted killing policy or not, learning how exactly an American citizen can be killed by his own government is a question that, in a democracy, deserves to be answered.
