REASONING MATTERS. Glenn Greenwald is incensed at the Washington Post's blithe dismissal of yesterday's ruling that found Bush's wiretapping unconstitutional, and criticizes it for lacking in scholarly complexity. And he's right, the editorial is unbearably smug and self-satisfied, as if the issue at hand is subordinate to the procedural perfection of those evaluating it. But if the Washington Post's case is unconvincing, Publius's demolition of the ruling is much more convincing. "[F]rom a legally technical standpoint," writes Publius, "this opinion is premature, unsupported, and in violation of elementary civil procedure...This is pure naked politics dressed up as law. It is an insult to the legal system. And the Sixth Circuit is going to squash it like a bug." And that may be the real program. As Scott Lemieux writes, "[I]f this was the Supreme Court the argument would be merely normative. But since it's a District Court, the quality of the legal reasoning matters in a pragmatic way as well: this decision is certain to be overturned by 6CA [Court of Appeals]. For lower courts, the quality of the legal reasoning most certainly does matter, and even a court sympathetic to the outcome will have no choice but to overturn this one." Whoops.
--Ezra Klein
