Subverting Open Government: White House Materials And Executive Branch Politics - Couverture souple

Montgomery, Bruce P.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0810851784 ISBN 13 : 9780810851788

Editeur : Scarecrow Press, 2005

Synopsis

Many of the most significant disputes between the legislative and executive branches of government have occurred over Congressional requests for information to assure executive accountability. No greater confrontation occurred than the fight over President Richard Nixon's White House tapes and records concerning the Watergate scandals. The constitutional crisis surrounding this event and the subsequent seizure of Nixon's presidential materials by Congress for the continuing Watergate investigations and trials after his resignation ultimately caused a quasi-revolution in the overturning of the tradition of private ownership of presidential materials with passage of the 1978 Presidential Records Act (PRA), which established public domain over White House materials starting with the Reagan presidency. In an unprecedented 1974 U.S. Supreme Court Ruling, the Court declared that the former president did not have an absolute and un-reviewable privilege to withhold presidential communications, thus compelling him to turn over to the special Watergate prosecutor the very documents that destroyed his presidency. The PRA represented but one of many cornerstone statutes in the flurry of post-Watergate legislative measures passed by Congress to assure a more open and accountable government after the enormous abuses of power and secrecy of the Nixon years. In this volume, Bruce Montgomery addresses these major themes under various presidential administrations starting with the Reagan years and continuing through the Bush administration. The essays address the themes of publicity and secrecy, legislative and executive branch conflict over presidential materials, historical legacy versus open government, and the ramifications of Nixon's inadvertent legacy concerning the presidential prerogative of executive privilege and the disposition of presidential communications.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Bruce P. Montgomery is associate professor and faculty director of Archives at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the founding director of The Human Rights Initiative, and his articles and book chapters have appeared in numerous journals, including Presidential Studies Quarterly, Human Rights Quarterly, Journal of Peace Studies, Archivaria, and others.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Scarecrow Press
• Date d'édition: 2005
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0810851784
• ISBN 13: 9780810851788
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 240
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible