The experts don’t like the technicalities of the decision against the NSA illegal snooping programme:

NYT: Experts Fault Reasoning in Surveillance Decision Even legal experts who agreed with a federal judge’s conclusion on Thursday that a National Security Agency surveillance program is unlawful were distancing themselves from the decision’s reasoning and rhetoric yesterday. They said the opinion overlooked important precedents, failed to engage the government’s major arguments, used circular reasoning, substituted passion for analysis and did not even offer the best reasons for its own conclusions. Discomfort with the quality of the decision is almost universal, said Howard J. Bashman, a Pennsylvania lawyer whose Web log provides comprehensive and nonpartisan reports on legal developments. “It does appear,” Mr. Bashman said, “that folks on all sides of the spectrum, both those who support it and those who oppose it, say the decision is not strongly grounded in legal authority.” The main problems, scholars sympathetic to the decision’s bottom line said, is that the judge, Anna Diggs Taylor, relied on novel and questionable constitutional arguments when more straightforward statutory ones were available. [...]

I am not sure I buy into this entirely. Jonathan Turley seemed to think well of the trial/judgement in his appearance on Keith Olberman’s Countdown.

Update: Laurence Tribe doesn’t agree with the criticism of Judge Taylor’s judgement, either.