Executive Privilege: A Constitutional Myth

by Raoul Berger

Book Overview

Challenges the historical bases of modern claims of executive privilege and cites the dangers of executive secrecy.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674274253
• ISBN13: 9780674274259
• Release Date: January 1974
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Excellent book

I well remember reading this book 35 years ago. Berger attacks the idea of "Executive Privilege" and never lets up. He goes through the history of it, discovering there never was any discussions in the Congress or constitutional convention backing up the concept of Executive Privilege. It's basically all from memo's written up by subordinates to Eisenhower to provide him justification, after the fact, for some actions that Eisenhower may have taken. Most of the memos relied upon conjecture and argumentation -- not constitutional law discussion to arrive at conclusions that backed up Eisenhower. Those memos were familiar to Nixon who used what he recalled from them to justify the actions of Nixon's administration.