The 37th President of the United States, Richard Nixon, was very, very popular. He had won the 1972 presidential election against Democratic opponent Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota with 520 electoral votes, with McGovern only carrying Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. Unfortunately, it was later revealed that Nixon’s campaign had conducted a number of illegal activities against McGovern’s campaign. The case United States v. Nixon, decided in 1974, involved whether Nixon, as president, was required to deliver subpoenaed materials to a federal court, and it serves as one of the most crucial cases limiting a president’s executive power to this day.
In 1972, the conservative movement was in full force (this movement led to President Ronald Reagan’s landslide elections in 1980 and 1984, and some believe that the conservative movement continues on to this day). Running for reelection under the Republican Party, Nixon was popular under a period of political realignment, especially in the Deep South, when many radical Southerners had become frustrated with Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson’s passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned racial segregation.
In the 1972 presidential election, Richard Nixon won reelection massively, garnering 520 electoral votes compared to his opponent’s 17. His opponent, Sen. George McGovern from South Dakota, had a campaign plagued with issues and Nixon was also able to use McGovern’s stances on abortion, reduction on defense spending (the Vietnam War had been raging on for a number of years at this point, although the U.S. was slowly withdrawing troops from the region), and amnesty for draft evaders to dismiss the Democratic platform as cowardly and divisive. This landslide victory for Nixon was the largest in history (until Ronald Reagan won reelection in 1984 with 525 electoral votes. He won 60 percent of the popular vote.
Despite Nixon’s popularity among Americans, he was still afraid of losing, and prior to his reelection bid in 1972, he had conducted a number of illegal activities against his opponent in what is now known as the Watergate scandal, which, among other things, involved five men (with ties to the Nixon administration) breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate building in Washington. This occurred on June 17, 1972, approximately five months before the election. At this point, the Watergate break-in was not known to the public to have been directed by Nixon, and a smooth-talking speech in August was seemingly all the American public needed to reelect him by a wide margin.
Unfortunately for Nixon, the scandal began heating up just over a year into his second term. In May 1973, the Attorney General appointed Archibald Cox as a special prosecutor to charge those involved with the break-in. Cox issued a subpoena to Nixon, demanding his release of taped conversations pertaining to the break-in recorded in the Oval Office. On Oct. 19, Nixon refused, instead asking for a compromise, which involved asking a hard-of-hearing senator to summarize the tapes instead. Cox turned down the compromise, demanding the full release of the tapes.
After Cox turned down the compromise, the next day, on Oct. 20, Nixon demanded his attorney general to fire Cox. The attorney general refused and resigned. Nixon then ordered the deputy attorney general to fire Cox. He, too, resigned in protest, unwilling to fire Cox. Nixon then ordered Solicitor General Robert Bork, acting as attorney general, to fire Cox. Bork fired Cox later that night, although he had considered resigning. He was persuaded by his team to stay on the Justice Department for the sake of it. This is now known as the “Saturday Night Massacre.”
The political and public opinion of the firing was highly damaging to the administration: the House of Representatives began an impeachment process against Nixon 10 days later, and Nixon was forced to appoint a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, to investigate the Watergate scandal on Nov. 1. A federal court later ruled that the firing was unlawful.
In April 1974, Jaworski issued a subpoena ordering Nixon to release some of the taped conversations and papers pertaining to the meetings between the president and the men, who had conducted the break-in, that had now been indicted by a grand jury. These tapes were believed to contain politically damaging evidence involving the men and the president.
This time, Nixon gave 43 edited transcripts of conversations and portions of 20 conversations demanded by the subpoena and his lawyer then asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to quash the subpoena. The judge denied Nixon’s lawyer the motion to quash the subpoena and ordered for all subpoenaed material to be turned over by May 31. Both Jaworski and Nixon appealed to the Supreme Court directly. The court heard oral arguments on July 8.
The question asked to the Supreme Court was, “Does the President of the United States have an absolute, unqualified privilege from judicial process under all circumstances?”
Nixon’s lawyers argued that the separation of powers between the executive branch and the judicial branch entirely prevented the Supreme Court from even hearing this case, arguing that one branch should not interfere with other branches. The lawyers also claimed that forcing Nixon to turn over the tapes would violate the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination.
Jaworski argued that although executive privilege exists, it is not absolute and presidents need to comply with court orders in a criminal proceeding. By giving the president absolute executive power, Jaworski argued, it would give the president unlimited power that could undermine the rule of law.
On July 24, 1974, the court issued its decision, siding unanimously (8-0, with one justice recusing himself due to ties with the people involved) with Jaworski. Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote the majority opinion. In the opinion, Burger wrote that although presidents do enjoy executive privilege, this was not absolute. In this case, the president’s interest in keeping his communications secret was outweighed by the interests of the courts in providing a fair trial with the full facts of the people involved, asserting that the interests of the president must be balanced with the interests of the judicial branch when they conflict with each other.
The court did acknowledge, though, in some cases, such as those involved with “military, diplomatic, or sensitive national security secrets,” the president’s need for confidentiality of the information would, in fact, outweigh the interests of the judiciary.
The court also found that courts could intervene on matters such as this one and Jaworski had shown a “sufficient likelihood that each of the tapes contains conversations relevant to the offenses charged in the indictment,” thereby allowing him access to the tapes.
Nixon was ordered to deliver the subpoenaed materials to the district court. Since the contained scathing evidence that Nixon was directly involved with the Watergate break-in and that impeachment and removal from office by Congress was a near-certainty, Nixon resigned in disgrace on Aug. 5, 1974. His vice president, Gerald Ford, took over the presidency.
Congress dropped its impeachment proceedings after Nixon’s resignation and President Ford gave a full and unconditional presidential pardon to Nixon on Sept. 8, thereby immunizing him from any federal incrimination. The pardon of Nixon likely led to Ford’s loss in the 1976 presidential election.
To this day, the case of United States v. Nixon remains a landmark Supreme Court case that serves as a check on presidential power. It also upholds the doctrine established in Marbury v. Madison that the Supreme Court has the final say on any constitutional matter and reaffirms that no one, including the president, is above the law.
In fact, the Watergate scandal is now so widely known that the suffix “-gate” is often used to denote a scandal.
This case was later affirmed in two cases involving former President Donald Trump’s tax returns: Trump v. Vance and Trump v. Mazars USA.
For more Supreme Court case coverage, check out the SCOTUS cases page. More posts just like this one will be coming soon, so stay tuned!