She added, "I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the Executive Branch of our Government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret."
... perfectly lawful certain actions ...
What a surprise - a judge that doesn't know whereof she prattles. Those actions may well be "legal" but they are never "lawful".
Legal is the rule or regulation created by a valid legislature, and applied through the judiciary and administrative edicts of that society, also known as statutory law.
Lawful is the authority those rules and regulations have on that society, also known as common law.
The first is "the letter of the law" - the second is "the spirit of the law", and they should, in a just society, be equivalent.
Dred Scott, Roe v Wade, Kelo, et al -- were all 'legal' decisions, but not 'lawful'.
Nixon said it more succinctly:
“Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”