United States v. Nixon
The United States Supreme Court ruling in the United States versus Richard Milhous Nixon , President of the United States, et al. (mostly cited as United States v. Nixon , 418 US 683) from 1974 is a fundamental decision on the limits of the powers of the President of the United States in relation to the other powers and the domestic information system .
background
In the context of the Watergate affair , US President Nixon was asked by the special investigator and later by Congress to release tapes recorded in the White House that could have helped clear up the affair. However, Nixon refused to release the tapes and instead offered transcripts of some of the recordings. The judge of the competent District Court for Washington, DC , however, insisted on the release of the tapes, and the dispute finally came before the Supreme Court of the United States.
The Supreme Court decision
Ultimately, the court had to decide whether the legislature or the judiciary had the right to ask the President of the United States, and hence the executive, to hand it over, or whether, as Nixon argued, it would constitute a violation of the separation of powers .
In its unanimous decision on July 24, 1974, the Court first made it clear that it had the competence to determine how the Constitution of the United States limited the powers of the President and that the Constitution provided that laws could also be enforced against the President . With regard to the executive power of the president, he stated that it did not have priority when it came to the surrender of verifiably relevant evidence in criminal proceedings. So the tapes had to be released.
In Section IV (“The claim of privilege”), letter D of the judgment of the Supreme Court, the sentence “Marshall's statement cannot be read to mean in any sense that a President is above the law, but relates to the singularly unique role under Art. II of a President's communications and activities, related to the performance of duties under that Article ", which was publicly shortened to" no person, not even the president of the United States, is completely above the law ". This sentence became a proverb in the short form "no one is above the law".
literature
- John J. Patrick, Richard M. Pious, Donald A. Ritchie: The Oxford Guide to the United States Government. Oxford University Press, New York 2001, ISBN 978-0-19-514273-0 , pp. 660f (= United States v. Nixon ).