Executive Privilege Research Paper

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“Executive Privilege” according to the article is the presidents’ defiance of Congress. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Nixon have all used their “Executive Privilege” to refuse an order from someone else. Like, when President George Washington used it to not provide papers relating to a failed military campaign to Congress. The big Question is should Presidents be allowed to do this? (Issue 9 144-145) According to Mark J. Rozell there is a need to the President to have Executive Privilege. “Executive Privilege is an implied executive power and is sometimes needed for the proper functioning of the executive branch.” (Rozell 146) Executive Privilege can be used for many things such as limiting the power of the Judicial Branch and…show more content…
(Rozell 151) Executive power is not bad and even when the President may be using executive power for bad reasons Congress can go around it an revoke the executive privilege like they did in the case with Bill Clinton. (Issue 9 145) According to many historians including David Gray Adler Executive Privilege is only a tool in the promotion of executive secrecy and deception.(Adler 152) Executive Privilege was not in the original Constitution. The framers of the constitution made no provision for the executive privilege, which is not surprising according to Adler because the framers’ deep-seated fear of executive authority, like the royal government. There are many things that Adler does not think of though in his argument. The Framers knew who would be the president when they were writing the Constitution, George Washington was the man everyone trusted and the only person that could be president. Knowing that he was president the Framers did not feel much need to put a lot of rules in place for the President. George Washington did use the executive privilege many times in his presidency including one time when Congress wanted a report, but George Washington withheld the report until he believed that giving it to them would benefit the

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