United States v. Nixon

418 U.S. 683 (1974), argued 8 July 1974, decided 24 July 1974 by vote of 8 to 0; Burger for the Court, Rehnquist not participating. A climactic incident in a dramatic event in U.S. history—the only case of a president being driven out of office in disgrace—the decision in United States v. Nixon was also a major constitutional landmark. It established the conditional nature of presidential immunity and in turn, may have affected the later decision, in Butz v. Economou (1978), not to follow the plurality view in Barr v. Matteo (1959) of absolute administrative immunity. Above all, it reined in extravagant assertions of President Richard Nixon's lawyers, who claimed presidential power to be unlimited, especially as to foreign and defense matters, and defined solely by a president's own judgment. In forcefully refuting such claims and proclaiming that no one is above the law, Chief Justice Warren Burger's opinion nevertheless twice quoted Chief Justice John Marshall's words, in United States v. Burr (1807), to the effect that presidential accountability to the legal order does not mean courts may proceed with the president as with any other citizen. Burger also enunciated a strong presumption of executive immunity and privilege.

The background of the case is the stuff of which books, novels, and movies are (and were) made. In 1972, burglars were discovered breaking into the Democratic campaign headquarters in Washington's Watergate apartment/hotel complex. It gradually emerged that the burglars had CIA and White House connections. The legal (and illegal) efforts to protect the burglars eventually involved President Nixon, though it was never established with whom authority for the break‐in ultimately rested nor why the act had been committed.

The effort to sweep matters under the rug generated complex further maneuvers, many involving payments of money to keep the arrested burglars from talking. The proliferation of illegal activity created new rumors and investigations. The courts, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and Congress all conducted investigations, and the media pursued the case thoroughly. Lower‐level Nixon aides, many of whom ultimately went to jail, cooperated in order to minimize their sentences. There were flat discrepancies between their testimony and statements of the president. To quiet criticism, Nixon and Attorney General Eliot Richardson set up a special prosecutor's office with a promise of independence. Archibald Cox, who had been solicitor general under President John F. Kennedy, agreed to serve.

Congressional hearings established that Nixon had installed a voice‐activated tape recorder in his office, and, armed with this knowledge along with White House appointment records, the special prosecutor sought to obtain certain tapes that he thought would establish the truthfulness or falsity of the president's statements and the testimony of his aides, especially his legal counsel, John Dean.

The president ordered Cox to desist, and, when he refused, ordered the attorney general to remove him. The attorney general and his deputy resigned rather than obey, but on their advice Solicitor General Robert Bork (who had not been a party to the original agreement) did the president's bidding as acting attorney general.

The public outcry was so great, however, that a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, was appointed; Jaworski reinstated the request for tapes. Federal District Court Judge John Sirica then issued a subpoena to the president, demanding that he produce the tapes.

In the Supreme Court, Nixon's attorneys argued that the matter was nonjusticiable. They reasoned that it was a dispute among departments within the executive branch and that, as such, it was a matter to be resolved by the president, not by the courts; they compared the dispute to one between congressional committees, which would be resolved by Congress without judicial interference. The Court rejected this argument, noting that Bork's agreement with Jaworski had, in fact, included consultation with Congress. The decision also relied on cases such as Peters v. Hobby (1955) and United States ex rel. Accardi v. Shaughnessy (1953), which had made clear that executive regulations that were thoroughly repealable nonetheless had legal effect and created rights enforceable in court so long as they were still in effect. The Court's agreement with the special prosecutor thus gave him authority to proceed. The courts had assumed in prior decisions on congressional immunity that they, and not Congress, defined its boundaries, and were in parallel fashion the appropriate forum as to the executive's prerogatives.

On the basic questions of executive immunity and privilege the Supreme Court held that the president was entitled to great deference, especially in matters of defense and national security, and that all presumptions were in his favor. But the prosecutor had particularized and precisely stated needs for specific tapes, both with respect to credibility of witnesses and for establishing the alleged crime. In addition, Nixon's claim of confidentiality had already been weakened by his release of the partial contents of the subpoenaed tapes and others.

At odds, then, were the enfeebled and diffuse claims of the executive branch versus the specific claims of the justice system in prosecuting a criminal case.

Burger's opinion emphasized throughout the need for deference and accommodation and cautioned that courts must not take lightly the presumptions protecting the privilege and immunity of the president. Nonetheless, it unequivocably rendered such privileges conditional, dependent on circumstances. Nixon was ordered to give up the tapes, which, it turned out, contained the “smoking gun” linking him to the conspiracy to obstruct justice. Less than three weeks later, he resigned from office.

See also Executive Immunity; Executive Privilege; Inherent Powers.

— Samuel Krislov

• 418 U.S. 683 (1974)
• Vote: 8–0
• For the Court: Burger
• Not participating: Rehnquist

Beginning with George Washington, several Presidents have asserted the right to withhold information from Congress or from a court. The right of the President to do this has come to be called executive privilege. Presidents have often made such claims in the area of foreign affairs. In 1974, however, President Richard Nixon claimed executive privilege for another reason.

In the spring of 1972, employees of President Nixon's reelection committee burglarized the Democratic party headquarters in the Watergate office complex in Washington and planted illegal electronic bugging equipment. Eventually, seven of President Nixon's top aides, including former attorney general John Mitchell, were indicted for their role in planning the Watergate break-in, as it came to be known, and for obstructing justice by trying to cover up their actions. During Senate hearings on the break-in and the cover-up, a Nixon aide admitted that there were secretly recorded tapes of Nixon's conversations with his aides. A special prosecutor investigating the Watergate break-in subpoenaed the tapes for use as evidence in the criminal investigations.

President Nixon refused to surrender the tapes. He claimed that the principle of executive privilege protected the record of his private conversations from such a subpoena. He argued that the actions of many past Presidents clearly established the tradition of executive privilege. He also claimed that to allow another branch of government, the courts, to obtain the tapes would destroy the separation of powers established by the Constitution and would weaken the Presidency.

The Issue

Did the constitutional principle of separation of powers and the tradition of executive privilege prevent the courts from requiring the President to turn over material needed as evidence in a criminal trial?

Opinion of the Court

The Supreme Court ordered President Nixon to turn over the tapes and other documents to the trial court for use as evidence. The Supreme Court rejected the claim that either separation of powers or executive privilege could make the President immune from the judicial process. The Court's ruling established the precedent that unless important military or diplomatic secrets affecting national security were involved, the need to ensure a fair trial outweighed the principle of executive privilege. The decision limited the concept of executive privilege by determining that a President could not use it to prohibit disclosure of criminal conduct.

At the same time, the Court's decision acknowledged the constitutionality of executive privilege in certain other situations. The Constitution does not mention executive privilege, and until the Court reached this decision, legal scholars had frequently debated whether any real constitutional basis supported the doctrine.

In United States v. Nixon, Chief Justice Warren Burger, a Nixon appointee, said that Presidents and their aides must be free to consider alternatives as they make decisions. In order to do so, they must possess the confidence to express themselves freely without fear that the public will gain access to their ideas. Thus, Burger wrote, “[Executive] privilege is fundamental to the operation of government and inextricably rooted in the separation of powers under the Constitution.”

Significance

President Nixon obeyed the Court's decision and turned over the tapes to the special prosecutor. Nixon claimed the demand for the tapes was a political maneuver by his enemies. However, this claim could not stand up in the face of a unanimous Court decision written by a Nixon appointee and supported by two other Nixon appointees. The tapes revealed that Nixon had participated in the cover-up. When the contents of these tapes became public knowledge, even Nixon's strongest supporters in Congress believed that he could no longer remain in office. Some Republican congressmen said they would have to vote for his impeachment, and leading Republican senators publicly announced that they saw no way he could avoid conviction. Nixon became the first U.S. President to resign from office.

See also Executive privilege; Separation of powers; Watergate investigation (1973–74)

In United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 94 S. Ct. 3090, 41 L. Ed. 2d 1039 (1974), the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the doctrine of executive privilege but held that it could not prevent the disclosure of materials needed for a criminal prosecution. The case arose during the Watergate political scandal, which involved President Richard M. Nixon and numerous members of his administration. The Court had to consider whether Nixon was required to turn over secret White House tape recordings to government prosecutors. Nixon claimed that the doctrine of executive privilege allowed him to refuse to release the tapes, while prosecutors argued that they had a right to obtain evidence of possible crimes, even if that evidence was held by the president of the United States.

The Watergate scandal began during the presidential campaign of 1972, in which Nixon defeated his Democratic opponent, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, by a wide margin. Several months before the election, on June 17, a group of burglars broke into the Democratic party campaign headquarters in the Watergate building complex in Washington, D.C. Aggressive investigative reporting by the Washington Post uncovered connections to officials in the Nixon administration. Though the administration denied any wrongdoing, it soon became clear that members of the administration had tried to cover up the burglary and connections to it that might include the president.

Under congressional and public pressure, Nixon appointed a special prosecutor. When it was revealed that the president had secretly taped conversations in the Oval Office in the White House, the prosecutor, Archibald Cox, filed a subpoena to secure tapes that he believed were relevant to the criminal investigation. When Cox refused to withdraw his request, Nixon had him fired. The resulting public outrage forced Nixon to appoint Leon Jaworski as a new special prosecutor.

In March 1974 a federal grand jury indicted seven Nixon associates for conspiracy to obstruct justice and for other offenses related to the Watergate burglary. Nixon himself was named as an unindicted co-conspirator. Upon Jaworski's motion the U.S. district court issued a new subpoena to the president, requiring him to produce certain tapes and documents pertaining to precisely identified meetings between the president and others. Although Nixon released edited transcripts of some of the subpoenaed conversations, his attorney moved to quash, or void, the subpoena on the grounds of executive privilege. When the district court denied the motion, the president appealed, and the case was quickly brought to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Nixon refused to release the tapes, contending that the doctrine of executive privilege gave him the right to withhold documents from Congress and the courts. Executive privilege, though not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, was first asserted by George Washington. Presidents have argued that the privilege is inherent in executive power and is necessary to maintain the secrecy of information related to national security and to protect the confidentiality of their deliberations. Executive privilege did not become a major point of contention until the Nixon presidency, however. Nixon routinely used it during his first term to thwart congressional inquiries.

The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision (Justice William H. Rehnquist recused himself because he had served in the Nixon administration), recognized for the first time the general legitimacy of executive privilege. Nevertheless, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, writing for the Court, rejected Nixon's claim of "an absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances." Burger found that [a]bsent a claim of need to protect military, diplomatic, or sensitive national security secrets," the need for protecting the confidentiality of presidential communications must give way to a legitimate request by the courts for information vital to a criminal prosecution. Burger noted that the judge would review the subpoenaed tapes in private to determine what portions should be released to the prosecutors. This confidential review would prevent sensitive but irrelevant information from being disclosed.

Nixon obeyed the order and turned the tapes over to the district court. When relevant portions were released, they revealed that the president had been intimately involved with the attempt to cover up White House involvement in the Watergate burglary. Less than three weeks after the Court announced its decision, Nixon resigned the presidency, thereby avoiding impeachment by Congress.

This is about the 1974 case on the powers of President Richard Nixon. For the 1993 impeachment of Judge Walter Nixon, see Nixon v. United States.

United States v. Nixon
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued July 8, 1974 Decided July 24, 1974
Full case name	United States v. Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States, et al.
Citations	418 U.S. 683 (more) 94 S. Ct. 3090; 41 L. Ed. 2d 1039; 1974 U.S. LEXIS 93
Prior history	Cert. before judgment to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
Argument	Oral argument
Holding
The Supreme Court does have the final voice in determining constitutional questions; no person, not even the President of the United States, is completely above law; and the president cannot use executive privilege as an excuse to withhold evidence that is 'demonstrably relevant in a criminal trial.'
Court membership
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices William O. Douglas · William J. Brennan, Jr. Potter Stewart · Byron White Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun Lewis F. Powell, Jr. · William Rehnquist
Case opinions
Majority	Burger, joined by Douglas, Brennan, Stewart, White, Marshall, Blackmun, Powell
Rehnquist took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision. It was a unanimous 8-0 ruling involving President Richard Nixon and was important to the late stages of the Watergate scandal. It is considered a crucial precedent limiting the power of any U.S. president.

Chief Justice Warren E. Burger wrote the opinion for a unanimous court, joined by Justices William O. Douglas, William J. Brennan, Potter Stewart, Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun and Lewis F. Powell.

Associate Justice William Rehnquist, a Nixon appointee, recused himself as he had a prior association with the Nixon administration.^[1][2]

Contents 1 Background 2 Case 3 Nixon and the Supreme Court 4 References 5 External links

Background

The Watergate scandal started in the 1972 presidential campaign between Democratic Senator George McGovern of South Dakota and the Republican President Richard Nixon. On June 17, before the election Nixon won, five burglars broke into Democratic headquarters located in the Watergate building complex in Washington, D.C.

Nixon appointed Archibald Cox to the position of special prosecutor, charged with investigating the break-in, but then fired Cox in the Saturday Night Massacre. However, public outrage forced Nixon to appoint a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, who was charged with conducting the Watergate investigation for the government.

In April 1974, Jaworski obtained a subpoena ordering Nixon to release certain tapes and papers related to specific meetings between the President and those indicted by the grand jury. Those tapes and the conversations they revealed were believed to contain damaging evidence involving the indicted men and perhaps the President himself.

Hoping Jaworski and the public would be satisfied, Nixon turned over edited transcripts of forty-three conversations, including portions of twenty conversations demanded by the subpoena. James D. St. Clair, Nixon's attorney, then requested Judge John Sirica of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to quash the subpoena. Sirica denied St. Clair's motion and ordered the president to turn the tapes over by May 31.

Both St. Clair and Jaworski appealed directly to the Supreme Court which heard arguments on July 8. St. Clair argued the matter should not be subject to "judicial resolution" since the matter was a dispute within the executive branch. The branch should resolve the dispute itself. Also, he claimed Special Prosecutor Jaworski had not proven the requested materials were absolutely necessary for the trial of the seven men. Besides, he claimed Nixon had an absolute executive privilege to protect communications "between high Government officials and those who advise and assist them" in carrying out their duties.

Less than three weeks later the Court issued its decision. The justices struggled to write an opinion that all eight could agree to. The stakes were so high, in that the tapes most likely contained evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the President and his men, that they wanted no dissent. All contributed to the opinion and Chief Justice Burger delivered the unanimous decision. After ruling that the Court could indeed resolve the matter and that Jaworski had proven a "sufficient likelihood that each of the tapes contains conversations relevant to the offenses charged in the indictment," the Court went to the main issue of executive privilege. The Court rejected Nixon's claim to an absolute, unqualified executive privilege from the judicial process under all

Case

Watergate

Events

Timeline Watergate burglaries Watergate tapes "Saturday Night Massacre" United States v. Nixon

People

Richard Nixon Conspirators John Dean John Ehrlichman H. R. Haldeman E. Howard Hunt Egil Krogh G. Gordon Liddy Jeb Magruder John N. Mitchell "Watergate Seven" Judicial Archibald Cox John Sirica L. Patrick Gray Journalists Carl Bernstein Bob Woodward Informants W. Mark Felt ("Deep Throat")

Groups

Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) "White House Plumbers" Senate Watergate Committee

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Archibald Cox, the first special prosecutor in the Watergate case, obtained a subpoena to obtain documentation of meetings held in President Nixon's offices, related to the Watergate break-ins and subsequent coverup. Cox's successor, Leon Jaworski, subsequently pursued that subpoena, and Nixon refused access to the tapes and as justification claimed their confidentiality was protected by executive privilege. Jaworski sought further court orders, and the Supreme Court accepted the case. The White House stated that Nixon would abide by "a definitive order" by the court.

The unanimous decision held that the Supreme Court has not only the power established in Marbury v. Madison to rule a law invalid for conflicting with constitutional provisions but also power to decide how the Constitution limits the President's powers; that the Constitution provides for laws enforceable on a president; and that executive privilege does not apply to "demonstrably relevant" evidence in criminal cases.

Nixon and the Supreme Court

In the presidential campaign of 1968, Richard Nixon promised to reshape the Supreme Court. The Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren had taken what many, including Nixon, felt was a liberal turn, being too sympathetic to defendants in the criminal justice system. Determined to move the Court toward his more conservative views, Nixon appointed four justices including, upon Warren's retirement, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger in 1969. Burger had been a hard-line, tough-on-criminals judge in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Nixon also appointed Harry A. Blackmun in 1970, and Lewis F. Powell, Jr., and William H. Rehnquist, both in 1971.

Nixon's presidency saw more legal confrontations with the Court over presidential powers than any other administration. Although four justices were his appointees, Nixon was dealt a series of setbacks from the Court in the 1970s. In United States v. U.S. District Court (1972) the Court rejected 8-0 Nixon's claim of presidential power to carry out electronic surveillance (wire-tapping) without a court warrant in order to investigate suspected subversive activities.

During his presidency, Nixon had claimed broad authority to impound funds provided by Congress. In 1975, the Court in Train v. City of New York ruled unanimously that Nixon had overstepped his authority when he had refused to distribute $18 billion in state aid under the Water Pollution Control Act of 1972.

References

• Text of United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974) is available from:  · Enfacto · Findlaw

1. ^ http://law.jrank.org/pages/13513/United-States-v-Nixon.html
2. ^ Kutler, Stanley L. (1992). The Wars of Watergate. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 508. ISBN 0393308278. http://books.google.com/books?id=k2U9w6RVpowC&pg=PA508&lpg=PA508&dq=US+v.+Nixon+Rehnquist+recusal&source=bl&ots=47RiDBpM5i&sig=Mr9uT-8ne9jrM980SZRInYAFYog&hl=en&ei=60L-Sc3NBKCqtgf16PSiDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7. Retrieved May 4, 2009. "Rehnquist recused himself in the case, citing his past association with the Nixon Administration." 

External links

• Watergate Supreme Court Cases Reference
• Oral argument and opinion announcement listen to audio recordings at oyez.org

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