I actually tracked down the ruling and tried to go through it unfortunately its a scanned image pdf so I couldn't really search for what I wanted.<p>But this is fishy all around.  The Executive doesn't have the ability to make things legal or not legal (especially retroactively - and they do have the ability to pardon which in a way makes that moot).<p>But from further reading it looks like the Obama "Office of Legal Counsel" wrote a brief stating that the searches were legal.  However this doesn't make it so. (an extension of the whole John Yoo mess).  What this is is a huge grey area w/o black letter law. Anyone can say its legal/illegal but the courts will still ultimately decide who's right.