Way To Rub It In
Judge rules White House aides can be subpoenaed - International Herald Tribune
Bates, who was appointed to the bench by Bush, issued a 93-page opinion that strongly rejected the administration’s legal arguments. He noted that the executive branch could not point to a single case in which courts held that White House aides were immune from congressional subpoenas.
“That simple yet critical fact bears repeating: the asserted absolute immunity claim here is entirely unsupported by existing case law,” Bates wrote.
Nice!
Tags: Congress, Politics, presidential confidentiality, seperation of powers, US
August 7th, 2008 at 5:31 am
This comes as a relief to those who prefer a republic to an empire. (Myself included.) Election years are a good time to reflect on the need to avoid the pressure toward an “elective monarchy”!
I haven’t read any of the legal background, so of course I’m bullshitting utterly. I like the result, but I have no sense of the relevant case law. FWIW, a 93-page opinion (your emphasis) isn’t unusual in length, in my experience — at least for cases of this magnitude. Among recent big cases, Heller v. D.C. and In re Marriage Cases were both in the same ballpark.