Word: subpoena
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Ervin and the Cox investigating committees should be ashamed if they are unable to arrive at the truth of the matter with all the time they have given themselves and with their ability to subpoena any and all employees...
...deliver its legal brief to Judge John J. Sirica (see box), arguing that the President has the absolute power to decide when the national welfare is best served by the release of presidential documents. Therefore, went the argument, the President can ignore Special Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox's subpoena of tape recordings of seven presidential meetings and one telephone conversation about Watergate...
...ranks with his fellow convicted burglars and talk in hopes of a lesser jail term. Watergate has been unraveling in full view ever since. Fittingly, it has fallen to Judge Sirica to referee this week the first full round in the battle for the White House tapes, now under subpoena by both the Senate Watergate committee and Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. It may be among Sirica's last major decisions as a district-court judge; on his 70th birthday next March, he must decide between retirement and stepping down to senior-judge status...
Dark Area. What makes the current legal question so difficult is that, as the University of Chicago's Philip Kurland observes, the President and Congress are clashing "in a dark gray area where there are no judicial precedents." Never before has Congress subpoenaed a President. Only once has the Judiciary Branch issued a subpoena to a President. That was in 1807, when Chief Justice John Marshall, performing his collateral role as a district-court judge in Richmond, was trying Aaron Burr for treason. Burr wanted Thomas Jefferson to produce letters written to him by one of the prosecution witnesses...
Marshall dismissed the English idea that "the King can do no wrong," for the American Constitution held the President liable to impeachment and removal, and, added Marshall, "It is not known ever to have been doubted but that the chief magistrate of a state may be served with a subpoena ad testificandum." That is, the President could be subpoenaed to appear as a witness. A more complicated issue was whether the President could be compelled to produce any document in his possession. Ruled Marshall: "The President, although subject to the general rules which apply to others, may have sufficient motives...