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by zardeh
3426 days ago
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>It's not a tangent. Ms. Yates apparently feels the president does not have the legal authority to make orders of this nature when President Trump is in office, but that he does have the authority when President Obama is in office. There's a very simple answer to this: She did not believe that the Obama EO was unconstitutional, whereas she believed that this one was. Then, everything makes sense. You can rant about how "there's no credible argument", but I'm inclined to believe an Attourney General over someone on an internet forum with regards to the law. So tell me this: what should she have done if she believed the EO, as applied, would be unconstitutional? Edit: also the judiciary is moving swiftly, in the past two days, the EO has been practically gutted in the courts. |
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You ask a reasonable hypothetical, but I don't think it matches the circumstances here. If Yates felt that she could not in good faith enforce the order because it was unconstitutional, I think she would have been very clear about this in her memo: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/30/us/document-L...
Instead, while not ruling out unconstitutionality, she pointed to the "broader" responsibility she feels the leader of the Department of Justice should have. I thought she said quite clearly (for a lawyer) that although she was uncertain whether the order was legal, her refusal was because she judged the order to be unjust and unwise. Personally, I greatly respect her differentiation between "constitutional" and "right".