The front page of today’s NY Times includes The Legal Arguments: In Limelight at Wiretap Hearing: 2 Laws, but Which Should Rule?. It begins:

It is the sort of problem that judges confront every day. One law forbids a certain activity. The other may allow it. Which one counts?
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales made the case to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday that two potentially contradictory Congressional actions — one a 1978 law forbidding domestic surveillance without a court’s permission, the other a 2001 resolution giving the president authority to use force to combat Al Qaeda — together mean that the executive branch is free to decide on its own to spy on communications between people in the United States and those abroad.
Under the ordinary rules that courts use to harmonize potentially conflicting laws, the more specific one typically governs. Here, that would seem to be the 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which created an elaborate legal scheme to regulate wiretaps, as well as a secret court that promptly hears warrant applications.

I suppose the last time an issue of statutory construction made the front page of the Times was when there were questions over the interpretation of Florida’s election contest provisions in the 2000 election controversy.
The current wiretapping controversy also raises questions about the interaction of the President’s constitutional authority and the scope of FISA. Some are skeptical of the AG’s arguments on this score as well. Senator Arlen Specter, in this Washington Post article, rejected the AG’s interpretation: “When Gonzales argues that the Constitution gives the president undisputable powers to conduct warrantless surveillance despite a statute aimed at requiring him to seek court approval, such an interpretation ‘is not sound,’ Specter said in the interview. ‘. . . He’s smoking Dutch Cleanser.'”
I’m looking forward to a discussion of these issues on the new Legislation listserv.