Question

define executive privilege and explains why executive privilege

restricted during President Nixon's administration.

Answer 1

Executive privilege allows the President to withhold information from government actors and/or the general public, primarily based on national security concerns. Before President Nixon, executive privilege was largely unquestioned and unchecked.

Executive privilege had always been nominally used in defense of the public interest, but Nixon attempted to use it to protect himself and other advisors during the Watergate investigation.

In investigating the Watergate scandal, Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski subpoenaed tapes of Nixon's conversations related to the scandal. In 1974's United States vs. Nixon, the President sought to invoke executive privilege to avoid turning over the tapes. The district court judge in the case found in favor of Jaworski, and Nixon appealed to the Supreme Court.

In the landmark Supreme Court case U.S. v. Nixon, the Supreme Court unanimously declared that executive privilege is constitutional and sometimes necessary for national security. But the Court also held that it is not all-encompassing. If requested documents and testimonies are a key part of an investigation, then they must be brought forward. Therefore, the Watergate tapes were turned over to the special prosecutor. Shortly after this decision, Nixon resigned.

The Supreme Court unanimously affirmed that executive privilege has certain limits, ordering Nixon to turn over the evidence as part of a lawful investigation. Due to Nixon's attempt to use executive privilege to conceal his involvement in Watergate, and the subsequent SCOTUS ruling, laws have been passed in order to challenge executive privilege in the public interest. One such law is the Freedom of Information Act.

Nixon forever changed how Americans view executive privilege. His use of the power led many Americans to believe that all uses are for the same undisclosed reasons. This may have led Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush to use the privilege sparingly—especially Ford, who had to deal with many congressmen using the Nixon saga as leverage to make the White House as transparent as possible. Reagan was so cautious that he did not use the privilege during the investigation of the Iran-Contra affair. There would not be another controversy regarding executive privilege until 1998.