Sentence examples for the program was lawful from inspiring English sources

The program was lawful, effective and necessary.

Still, Ms. Rice wrote that she asked Mr. Ashcroft personally to review the program and "advise N.S.C. principals whether the program was lawful".

In a 29-page opinion that quoted the N.S.A. director, Keith Alexander, as saying the leaks had caused "significant and irreversible damage" to national security, Judge Claire V. Eagan, a federal judge in the Northern District of Oklahoma, declared that the program was lawful.

The group asked the judge, Richard Leon of Federal District Court, to stop the checkpoints until a trial could be held on whether the program was lawful, but Judge Leon refused, saying it was unlikely that a lawsuit to stop the program permanently would succeed.

"Consistent with the recent holdings of the United States district courts for the southern district of New York and southern district of California, as well as the findings of 15 judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on 36 separate occasions over the past seven years, the administration believes that the program is lawful.

But even if the programs are "lawful," the promulgation of secret laws, efforts to conceal the extent of these programs from Congress and trying to block the courts from overseeing them, have all perverted the oversight mechanisms to which a democratically accountable government ought to be subject.

Gen. Michael Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency NSAA), told NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday that the programs are lawful and justified in the war on terrorism.

In March, Mr. Koh delivered a speech in which he argued that the drone program was lawful because of the armed conflict with Al Qaeda and the principle of self-defense.

Two weeks later, in New York, Judge William H. Pauley III ruled that the metadata-collection program was lawful and effective.

In recent months, top lawyers for the State Department and the Defense Department have tried to square the idea that the C.I.A.'s drone program is lawful with the United States' efforts to prosecute Guantánamo Bay detainees accused of killing American soldiers in combat, according to interviews and a review of military documents.

He continued: "It is the administration's view, consistent with the recent holdings of the United States District Courts for the Southern District of New York and Southern District of California, as well as the findings of 15 judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on 36 separate occasions over the past seven years, that the telephony metadata collection program is lawful".