Critics of special counsels and of independent prosecutors will savor the decision by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis, III of the Eastern District of Virginia. Here is a link to the pdf. What I particularly enjoyed about it were the collection of sources on the problems with such prosecutors and the summary of the problems. I also enjoyed the judge's opinion that the constitutionality of Mueller's appointment basically depends on the attorney general's ability to fire him. If the attorney general can't fire him, then he isn't an "inferior officer" under the appointments clause of the Constitution. Anyway, read the whole thing, if you are interested in Mueller, in Ken Starr, in Lawrence Walsh, or in the Constitution.
Some highlights:
To provide a Special Counsel with a large budget and to tell him or her to find crimes allows a Special Counsel to pursue his or her targets without the usual time and budget constraints facing ordinary prosecutors, encouraging substantial elements of the public to conclude that the Special Counsel is being deployed as a political weapon...
If a Special Counsel discovers no criminal activity then the investigation is likely to be perceived as a waste of time and resources, and thus a special counsel has a strong incentive to find criminality and to prosecute criminal conduct by the people he has been charged with investigating — here persons connected with the Trump campaign...
The Constitution's system of checks and balances ... are designed to ensure that no single individual or branch of government has plenary or absolute power. The appointment of special prosecutors has the potential to disrupt these checks and balances, and to inject a level of toxic partisanship into investigation of matters of public importance.