10 May 2010

Me like what me see . . .


While some aspects of her oeuvre are not great (e.g., I worry that her rejection of judicial activism won't extend to the masturbatory rantings by nutcases like Scalia since it's become conventional wisdom that conservatives by definition can't be judicial activists, which is completely ridiculous), this is pretty good stuff:

During Ms. Kagan’s confirmation for solicitor general, she was asked whether the president has the authority to order wiretaps without a warrant from a court.

She cited a three-part analysis established by the Supreme Court in a 1952 case, Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company v. Sawyer, which struck down president Harry S. Truman’s authority to seize the nation’s steel mills in the name of national security. (The Justice Department cited the same analysis in 2006 in justifying President George W. Bush’s power to order the National Security Agency surveillance program, as did Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.) The analysis notes that “when the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress,” presidential “power is at its lowest ebb” and these circumstances should be rare.

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