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Sign up for our monthly email alertsSubverting Open Government
White House Materials and Executive Branch Politics
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SUBJECTS
Political Science » American Government
Political Science » Political History
Law & Legal Studies
History » American History » American History (General)
Library & Information Science » Government Information
Political Science » Political Science (General)
REVIEWS
"Montgomery, director of the University of Colorado archives, addresses the ongoing dispute over public access to presidential papers and recordings, beginning with the controversies unleashed by Richard Nixon's claim that executive privilege entitled him to refuse disclosure of his White House tapes. The author explains the US v. Nixon (1974) case and its aftermath, but many readers will be surprised to learn that the issue of public access to presidential records remains unsettled today. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 attempted to resolve some ambiguities regarding public access, but the issue emerged again that the problem may become even more controversial than it was at the end of the Nixon era. This volume does an admirable job of covering the relevant legal issues and cases as they have evolved since the early 1970s. Highly recommended. General readers, lower-division undergraduates and above."
— CHOICE
DESCRIPTION
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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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.
