Harvard’s (and the Democratic Party’s) Laurence Tribe is upset with intellectually honest liberals who, though sympathetic with the result, conceded that Judge Anna Diggs Taylor’s opinion last week, holding the NSA’s Terrorist Surveillance Program unconstitutional, was a disgrace. Ann Althouse has a superb take-down of Tribe (h/t Bench Memos):
Are you saying that ordinary people who don’t read law reviews and who are trying to understand current events shouldn’t have the benefit of law professors helping them understand an important new case, that we’re distracting them from their proper job of despising the President? You want people to concentrate on the judge’s conclusion and not to question the judge’s reasoning and analysis? To do that is to bow to authority. If that’s what people ought to do, what happens to the foundation for criticizing the President? The President has concluded that he has the power to do what he’s doing. Why shouldn’t people accept that “important conclusion” and leave it for the experts to hash out the details in law review articles?