3 ms·

Indeed - there are limits to the "only following orders" defense. rayiner, I'm curious what you think about Dershowitz' argument that she should have resigned?

• rayiner 10y ago
  I think her legal objection was overbroad, in that there is some subset of the order that could have been defended in good faith. And, in general, the right thing for a lawyer to do when she cannot proceed on ethical grounds is to resign quietly so as to not prejudice the client. But I think Dershowitz ignores crucial situational context. He says: "A responsible attorney general would seek to analyze these complex issues before jumping into the political fire with a blanket refusal to defend any part of the order." That's fine and good in theory, but this order was implemented over a weekend with apparently no vetting by the DOJ. It was almost certainly unconstitutional as applied in many situations. And Yates would have to send attorneys into courts to defend the order right now. She did not have the luxury of taking time to figure out what "parts of [the order] are legally defensible." Remember, contemporaneously with firing Yates, the White House did a 180 on one of the key legal interpretations: that the order applied to green card holders. You do not go into court and advance a legal argument, and then tell the court sometime later "oh, now that we have had a chance to actually analyze these complex legal issues, we were wrong on A, B, and C." As a supervising lawyer, Yates could not tell her subordinates "defend the order for now, but we may have to walk some of this stuff back once we figure out what is actually legal."
• eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  Dershowitz needs to buy his soul back from Satan and stop supporting the Trump administration.