Title: What Is Executive Privilege? History of a Presidential Power | Time
Headings: President Trump Invoked Executive Privilege. Here's the History of That Presidential Power
President Trump Invoked Executive Privilege. Here's the History of That Presidential Power
What is executive privilege?
Why do presidents need executive privilege?
Who was the first President to invoke executive privilege?
How has executive privilege evolved?
Why is executive privilege still controversial?
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Content: One oft-cited definition comes from Mark Rozell, author of two books on executive privilege and the Founding Dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He defined executive privilege in a 1998 Minnesota law review article as “the right of the president and high-level executive branch officers to withhold information from Congress, the courts and ultimately the public” when it comes to “ (1) certain national security needs and (2) protecting the privacy of White House deliberations when it is in the public interest to do so.” The term “executive privilege” is not in the U.S. Constitution, but it’s considered an implied power based on the separation of powers laid out in Article II, which is meant to make sure one branch of government doesn’t become all-powerful; executive privilege is one way the legislative branch’s power over the executive is limited. For example, when Congress investigated George W. Bush’s firing of eight U.S. Attorneys in 2006, the White House Counsel at the time, Fred Fielding, alluded to executive privilege in a letter referencing the “the constitutional prerogatives of the presidency.” But prominent constitutional law expert Raoul Berger famously called it a “constitutional myth” in his 1974 book, literally entitled Executive Privilege: A Constitutional Myth. Why do presidents need executive privilege? The basic idea behind executive privilege is that an entity like the U.S. government requires a lot of transparency, but also can’t function if there’s no possible way to speak about things confidentially. “All reasonably complicated organizations need some space in which people can discuss what they’re going to do, with some degree of confidentiality.