From UNC Chapel Hill’s press release:
United States Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. will deliver the Commencement address for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law. The law school Commencement service will take place at 10 a.m. May 12 in Carmichael Arena.
UNC School of Law Dean John Charles Boger will preside during the ceremony.
“We are delighted that Attorney General Holder has accepted the invitation to speak to our graduating class in May,” Boger said. “As the nation’s top government attorney, with a remarkable record of prior public service, Holder will offer our graduates an extraordinary perspective on the duties and opportunities in their chosen profession.”
Just wondering if those soon-to-be lawyers will be pondering why the Attorney General won’t provide documents to his fellow Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden, who continues to press Holder to reveal the legal justification that the Obama administration is relying on to kill U.S. citizens suspected of being terrorists — without giving them their constitutional rights. From Sen. Wyden’s press release, which can be found on his website:
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Washington, D.C. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden called the Administration’s refusal to share legal opinions pertaining to the executive branch’s understanding of its authority to kill Americans “an indefensible assertion of executive authority.” Wyden has been pressing the Justice Department and other administration officials to share its legal interpretations of the government’s authority in this area for more than a year but, as the Senator writes, “it is increasingly clear that [the Justice Department] has no intention of doing so.”
“To be clear, I am not suggesting that the President has no authority to act in this area. If American citizens choose to take up arms against the United States during times of war, there can undoubtedly be some circumstances under which the President has the authority to use lethal force against those Americans,” wrote Wyden. “However, when the United States is engaged in a military conflict with a terrorist group, whose members do not wear uniforms but instead attempt to blend in with civilian populations in a variety of countries around the world, questions about when the President may use lethal force against Americans whom he believes are part of this enemy force become significantly more complicated.
“Members of Congress need to understand how (or whether) the executive branch has attempted to answer these questions so that they can decide for themselves whether this authority has been properly defined. But it is impossible for elected legislators to understand how the executive branch interprets its own authority if the secret legal opinions that outline the Justice Department’s understanding of this authority are withheld from Congress by the Administration.”
Wyden has long asserted that it is inappropriate for the Administration to rely on what he refers to as “secret law” or classified legal interpretations that grant the government authorities without the knowledge and consent of the American people.
“I understand that government officials who choose to rely on secret law almost invariably believe that their decision to do so is justified, and that their secret interpretations of the law would stand up to public scrutiny. But the only way to find out whether this is true is to ensure that this public scrutiny actually takes place,” wrote Wyden, “Intelligence agencies may sometimes need to conduct secret operations, but they should never be in the position of relying on secret law.”
