Overview

On July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled eight to zero that President Richard Nixon had to surrender his White House tape recordings to a federal grand jury. Nixon had claimed that the tapes were protected by executive privilege - the president's constitutional right to keep his communications confidential. The Court disagreed. Sixteen days later, Nixon resigned. He was the first president in American history to do so. United States v. Nixon is the most important constitutional decision about presidential power ever issued by the Supreme Court. It established that executive privilege exists - giving presidents the legal protection for confidential communications they genuinely need - and established that it is not absolute. No person in the American constitutional system, not even the president, is entirely beyond the reach of the law. The President vs. The Court tells the complete story of the constitutional crisis that produced that ruling. From the Watergate break-in to the secret taping system, from the Saturday Night Massacre to Leon Jaworski's subpoena for sixty-four tapes, from the eight-to-zero Supreme Court ruling to the smoking gun tape that made Nixon's position untenable - Reid Harlow traces one of the most dramatic confrontations between a president and the constitutional order in American history. This is the story of what happens when the most powerful person in the country claims to be above the law - and the courts say no. The rule of law held. Whether it always will is the question that Nixon's case continues to ask.

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