Ethics

Judge Upholds Telecom Immunity

By Ed Brayton

Judge Vaughn Walker is up to his eyeballs in cases involving warrantless wiretaps. In addition to being the judge in the Al Haramain case, where he has been doing an excellent job of rejecting the claims of absolute and unchecked authority being made by the Bush and Obama administrations, he was also the judge hearing a challenge to the constitutionality of the provision for telecom immunity passed last year. And he has just upheld that law (PDF) as constitutional.

There are a couple of very important aspects to this. Judge Walker makes a clear distinction between suits aimed at the telecom companies for their role in assisting the government to illegally wiretap Americans and suits against the government for doing so. Indeed, he makes quite explicit the fact that suits against the government, including the ones he is presiding over, may continue:

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on June 08, 2009 (boomark / email).