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Article: Executive Privilege in the Ford Administration: Prudence in the Exercise of Presidential Power.
- Article from:
- Presidential Studies Quarterly
- Article date:
- March 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Center for the Study of the Presidency. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Watergate crisis brought the doctrine of executive privilege--which recognizes the right of the president to withhold information from the coordinate branches of government--to the forefront of political discourse in the United States. Although presidents for years had exercised some form of that controversial power, no single event had ever had such an impact on the exercise of executive privilege.
President Richard M. Nixon's extreme claims of executive privilege--based on his unsupported argument that executive privilege is an unrestricted presidential power that cannot be challenged by another branch of government--had the effect of giving a bad name to ...