CLDEF joined with former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese to file an amicus brief today in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit supporting General Michael Flynn. The brief explains that the Attorney General of the United States has responsibility to ensure that no persons are prosecuted for federal crimes which do not exist. We also argue that judges are responsible to obey the requirements of Deuteronomy 1:17, to judge impartially, but they are not responsible for the entire criminal justice system.
The article begins: ” Edwin Meese, former attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, filed his own brief along with the Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund in support of Flynn. The conservatives’ brief highlights an indelible moment between Flynn and Sullivan in 2018, when the judge said to the defendant in open court, “Arguably, you sold your country out.” Meese argued that the motion to dismiss was unusual, but not extraordinary, and that it is Attorney General William Barr’s responsibility to “terminate a baseless prosecution in the interest of justice.”
Mr. Rudy is a patent lawyer who was challenging the patent application fee increases based on the ineligibility of Barack Obama to enact laws as President of the United States. The courts below ruled that whether Obama qualified to be President of the United States was a political question that cannot be entertained by the judicial system, having been given by the Constitution to Congress to determine.
This case involved a challenge to Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (“NDAA”), which authorized military detention of civilians based on vague standards of providing “support” for an adversary of the United States, similar to the Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. Journalist Christopher Hedges and a group of journalists and lawyers brought this challenge to the NDAA.
Barack Obama made several recess appointments between Senate pro forma sessions, purporting to following Article II, Section 2, Clause 3, the Recess Appointments Clause. A challenge was brought against an action by the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) against an employer who alleged that the NLRB action was invalid due to a lack of quorum because a majority of the Board members had received recess appointments. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with the employer, and the NLRB sought review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
On December 10, 2010 an amicus brief was filed on behalf of CLDEF in the case of Carol Ann Bond v. United States in the United States Supreme Court in support of petitioner Bond. This case presents an unusual situation where the government has reconsidered its previous position and embraced the position of the criminal defendant petitioner Bond in seeking to overturn the decision of the court of appeals.