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> Nothing forces the government, or any other entity, to publicize its interpretation of law until it is challenged in public court. Okay, that's a solid legal
by md224 13y ago
> Nothing forces the government, or any other entity, to publicize its interpretation of law until it is challenged in public court.
Okay, that's a solid legal perspective, but what about a normative perspective here? Is it a good thing that judgements of interpretation are inaccessible to the public?
- rayiner 13y agoI think it would be impractical to force every federal agency to put make every legal interpretation public, simply because people wouldn't do it. They'd just avoid putting things down in writing instead. Ultimately, any internal interpretations have to be solidified and put down in writing in any court proceeding. I think that is the backstop against internal interpretations run amok. And it does function as an effective backstop in other areas of government, where every agency action is met by dozens of legal challenges that play out in public courts. The problem with the NSA situation is that the NSA's actions are not subject to regular court challenges, and that's by design. Congress made it that way.
- revelation 13y agoGo back a second here. Of course they are constantly evaluating if they are within the law; so is every other person when filing their goddamn taxes. But legal questions of the magnitude of "do we have the right to collect this data under the constitution" are obviously not decided on the spur of the moment. When the CIA wanted to torture, they asked the DOJ and John Yoo to come up with a piece of paper telling them in lots of legalese that they were allowed to do so. Obviously these legal interpretations exist, today.
- tptacek 13y agoA thread from earlier today that went into some diagnostic depth on this point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6008976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6008976