After reading through U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor’s ruling (PDF) on the NSA domestic spying issue, I found a great deal of it worthwhile and compelling.  It is a 44-page document, however, so sharing everything I found of note would ultimately be overkill.  While I recommend you read the entire decision if you’re so inclined, let me point out the most critical aspect of her decision.

Although this court is persuaded that Plaintiffs have alleged sufficient injury to establish standing, it is important to note that if the court were to deny standing based on the unsubstantiated minor distinctions drawn by Defendants, the President’s actions in warrantless wiretapping, in contravention of FISA, Title III, and the First and Fourth Amendments, would be immunized from judicial scrutiny. It was never the intent of the Framers to give the President such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights. The three separate branches of government were developed as a check and balance for one another. It is within the court’s duty to ensure that power is never “condense[d] … into a single branch of government.” Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507, 536 (2004) (plurality opinion). We must always be mindful that “[w]hen the President takes official action, the Court has the authority to determine whether he has acted within the law.” Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681, 703 (1997). “It remains one of the most vital functions of this Court to police with care the separation of the governing powers… . When structure fails, liberty is always in peril.” Public Citizen v. U.S. Dept. of Justice, 491 U.S. 440, 468 (1989) (Kennedy, J., concurring).

Because of the very secrecy of the activity here challenged, Plaintiffs each must be and are given standing to challenge it, because each of them, is injured and chilled substantially in the exercise of First Amendment rights so long as it continues. Indeed, as the perceived need for secrecy has apparently required that no person be notified that he is aggrieved by the activity, and there have been no prosecutions, no requests for extensions or retroactive approvals of warrants, no victim in America would be given standing to challenge this or any other unconstitutional activity, according to the Government. The activity has been acknowledged, nevertheless.

Why this is so important can not be clearer.  Using the non-existent “state secrets privilege” to block lawsuits of this nature, the administration is asserting that the judiciary has no right to perform its constitutional duties with regards to monitoring the executive branch.  Checks and balances within the government are fundamental cornerstones of our government, mechanisms intended and used to ensure no branch is allowed to operate beyond the purview of the constitution.  If allowed to act unchecked, any branch would be able to violate the law and constitution without fear of repercussions.

The judge in this case addressed specifically that aspect of the program.  She made clear that asserting the privilege in order to block discovery in such lawsuits essentially renders the constitution and law unenforceable.  The people’s right for a redress of grievances is essentially nullified under such circumstances, and therein rests the greatest threat to America.  Thankfully, she saw through the bluff and ruled against the government’s unfettered abuse of power.

Similarly, because the government chose to assert the state secrets privilege, any discovery in the case would be overridden by such an assertion.  That act alone would render discovery in the case inconsequential and fruitless, and, as she pointed out, that again nullifies the US Constitution as a whole.  Should the government claim it is acting to protect national security and use such a claim as defense against offering any person the opportunity to enforce his or her rights under the law and the Constitution, the government is essentially negating all rights and protections under both umbrellas.  Again, this is unacceptable under our form of government, and more importantly, it is unacceptable under the US Constitution.

Because the government inflicted blindness on the courts by way of the state secrets privilege, the judge was forced to render a decision based on the evidence on hand.  That includes public admissions by the government that such a program was indeed in place, that the program did indeed target anyone speaking to those overseas, and that the program was in place and active at the time of the hearing.  She used these admissions, coming from the president and many others within the administration, as sufficient evidence to circumvent discovery and provide reason enough to rule against the government.  They did, after all, already admit they were eavesdropping on all manner of communications without warrants.  That is both unconstitutional and illegal.  The judge so ruled.

I suspect her decision will be overturned by less patriotic judges who will cave to the totalitarian methods of this presidency.  Unlike Judge Taylor, they will allow the state secrets privilege to override the law and US Constitution.  Such a decision will be blasphemous in the face of America and the Framers’ intentions.  It will help solidify the continuing centralization of all power to the executive branch, and it will set a legal precedent unlike any that has come before: that any president may assert they are above the law and constitutional protections if they claim it is necessary for national security.  You undoubtedly see where that leads us.

To a dictatorship.  We teeter on the edge of this even now.

Thankfully, a US District Court ruling does not mandate national change.  It does, however, strike a blow to the enemy and sets up the process by which the case will reach the SCOTUS.  That is where the final decision can be made for the entire country.  In that spirit, I conclude with this from Glenn Greenwald:

Everyone has been debating these legal issues for the last 8 months. Everyone knows what the issues are, what the arguments are, what the relevant cases are, etc. Judge Taylor was not going to convince anyone of anything new even if she unleashed some sterling legal opinion. And no matter what she said, the Sixth Circuit — and probably the Supreme Court after that — is going to look at all of these issues anew, from scratch, without regard to what the District Court said about these matters.

Look at any judicial ruling of any significance — Youngstown, Brown, Hamdan, Miranda, whatever one’s favorite case is. Nobody knows, remembers, or cares what the District Court even ruled in those cases, let alone the quality of the reasoning, because it does not matter.

The significance of Judge Taylor’s ruling lies in the act itself — the re-affirmation of the principle that the President’s conduct is subject to judicial review and is subordinate to the laws enacted by the American people through their Congress. This administration, while claiming it has substantial legal authority for its radical executive power theories, has desperately tried to avoid judicial review of the President’s conduct at every turn — with the abuse of the “state secrets” doctrine, the Specter bill, the denial of judicial review to detainees, the refusal to ask the FISA court for a ruling on the legality of its program.

The significance of Judge Taylor’s ruling lay not in the quality of her judicial opinion (which everyone gets to feel really smart by demeaning), but instead it is the resounding rejection of the extremist and dangerous theory that the President, because of the “war” we are fighting, has the right to operate without constraints of any kind, including those imposed by the Constitution and Congressional statutes. On that key issue, the court’s analysis was correct and even powerful…