Dumb Question of the Twenty-first Century: Is It Legal?
June 3, 2011 2:10 PM   Subscribe

Welcome to Post-Legal America. Don't ask whether acts of state are legal or not, because legality is an irrelevant question. Legality has not stopped torture, rendition, wars of aggression, lawless surveillance and a thousand other crimes. 'When it comes to acts of state today, there is only one law: don’t pull up the curtain on the doings of any aspect of our spreading National Security Complex or the imperial executive that goes with it.'

'Theoretically, the National Security Complex exists only to protect you. Its every act is done in the name of making you safer, even if the idea of safety and protection doesn’t extend to your job, your foreclosed home, or aid in disastrous times.' 'It’s beyond symbolic', 'that only one figure from the national security world seems to remain in the “legal” crosshairs: the whistle-blower. If, as the president of the United States, you sign off on a system of warrantless surveillance of Americans -- the sort that not so long ago was against the law in this country -- or if you happen to run a giant telecom company and go along with that system by opening your facilities to government snoops, or if you run the National Security Agency or are an official in it overseeing the kind of data mining and intelligence gathering that goes with such a program, then -- as recent years have made clear -- you are above the law.

If, however, you happen to be an NSA employee who feels that the agency has overstepped the bounds of legality in its dealings with Americans, that it is moving in Orwellian directions, and that it should be exposed, and if you offer even unclassified information to a newspaper reporter, as was the case with Thomas Drake, be afraid, be very afraid. You may be prosecuted by the Bush and then Obama Justice Departments, and threatened with 35 years in prison under the Espionage Act (not for “espionage,” but for having divulged the most minor of low-grade state secrets in a world in which, increasingly, everything having to do with the state is becoming a secret).'

If in practice, legality seems irrelevant to so many acts of government, is it time to stop asking the very question of whether an act is legal or not?
posted by VikingSword (12 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: If it's worth posting, do it without the editorial preamble or rhetorical question-for-discussion coda please. -- cortex



 
By the way, how are things going in Libya?
posted by Trurl at 2:17 PM on June 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


"When the President does it, that means it is not illegal." Richard M. Nixon, TV interview with David Frost, May 20, 1977
posted by jamjam at 2:19 PM on June 3, 2011 [5 favorites]


When, exactly, did 'war of aggression' become a crime? Don't remember hearing about that bill passing Congress, myself.

This post rates about five on the axe-grinding scale.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 2:22 PM on June 3, 2011


Ugh, what they've done to Thomas Drake is disgusting.

Is the Libyan war legal? Was Bin Laden’s killing legal? Is it legal for the president of the United States to target an American citizen for assassination? Were those “enhanced interrogation techniques” legal?

...My answer is this: they are irrelevant


Oh, and what they've done to international norms is disgusting, too.
posted by Hoopo at 2:23 PM on June 3, 2011


Well, when the President (or his designated agent, or authorized (sub)contractor, or assignee-in-fact) does it, that means that it is not illegal.
posted by orthogonality at 2:23 PM on June 3, 2011


If in practice, legality seems irrelevant to so many acts of government, is it time to stop asking the very question of whether an act is legal or not?

No. It's time to start asking it louder.
posted by Zozo at 2:23 PM on June 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


When, exactly, did 'war of aggression' become a crime?

Around the time we executed a bunch of Nazis for it.
posted by empath at 2:24 PM on June 3, 2011 [3 favorites]


Excuse me, VikingSword. Agent Fabulous, FBI. We'd like to ask you some questions about a recent posting on an extremist website called MetaFilter.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 2:27 PM on June 3, 2011


When, exactly, did 'war of aggression' become a crime?

Since at least the 50's:

A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense usually for territorial gain and subjugation. The phrase is distinctly modern and diametrically opposed to the prior legal international standard of "might makes right", under the medieval and pre-historic beliefs of right of conquest. Since the Korean War of the early 1950s, waging such a war of aggression is a crime under the customary international law.
posted by VikingSword at 2:28 PM on June 3, 2011 [2 favorites]




Nice company you guys keep.

When your ex-leader boasts in his memoir about committng war crimes and still freely travels the cities of his nation as a celebrated man, that nation is going to have an image problem.
posted by Trurl at 2:35 PM on June 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


Since at least the 50's:

Before that too--it's not far removed from the international norms of "respecting sovereignty" and "responsibility for warlike acts" that dates back to the Peace of Westphalia.
posted by Hoopo at 2:42 PM on June 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


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