I’ve printed a brand new article on SSRN titled: History of Special Counsel Before Watergate. This text is predicated on intensive analysis in additional than a dozen completely different archives. This text can be related to the continuing litigation towards the particular counsel, which I’ll talk about shortly.
Right here is the abstract:
This text presents a main supply materials written by presidents, attorneys basic, U.S. attorneys, particular prosecutors, and others from the 1850s to the Fifties. Corpus reproduces greater than a dozen archival main sources to supply a greater account of the regulation, displaying how attorneys basic underneath Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Grant, Garfield, Theodore Roosevelt, and Truman employed particular Prosecutor.
Throughout every of those six presidential administrations, the Lawyer Normal retained outdoors counsel as particular counsel: (1) to help the U.S. Lawyer with prosecutions, or (2) to help the Lawyer Normal with investigations. In none of these instances did the legal professional basic appoint an out of doors lawyer as a particular prosecutor after which delegate to him the powers that trendy particular prosecutors now assert: all of the powers of a Senate-confirmed U.S. legal professional.
There may be one outlier. In 1924, throughout the Coolidge administration, Congress enacted laws establishing a Senate-confirmed particular prosecutor to prosecute Teapot Dome defendants. These particular advisers are given “full independence.” Whether or not these positions are in step with the Supreme Courtroom’s trendy separation of powers jurisprudence is questionable.
This observe reveals that the post-Watergate period particular prosecutor’s place just isn’t much like the pre-Watergate period particular prosecutor’s place. Thus, pre-Watergate historical past doesn’t present help for the fashionable post-Watergate particular prosecutor and the huge energy he allegedly wielded.
I welcome feedback and suggestions!
