Opinion ID: 109729
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Presidential Privilege

Text: Having concluded that the separation-of-powers principle is not necessarily violated by the Administrator's taking custody of and screening appellant's papers, we next consider appellant's more narrowly defined claim that the Presidential privilege shields these records from archival scrutiny. We start with what was established in United States v. Nixon, supra that the privilege is a qualified one. [9] Appellant had argued in that case that in camera inspection by the District Court of Presidential documents and materials subpoenaed by the Special Prosecutor would itself violate the privilege without regard to whether the documents were protected from public disclosure. The Court disagreed, stating that neither the doctrine of separation of powers, nor the need for confidentiality of high-level communications, without more, can sustain an absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege . . . . [10] 418 U. S., at 706. The Court recognized that the privilege of confidentiality of Presidential communications derives from the supremacy of the Executive Branch within its assigned area of constitutional responsibilities, [11] but distinguished a President's broad, undifferentiated claim of public interest in the confidentiality of such [communications] from the more particularized and less qualified privilege relating to the need to protect military, diplomatic, or sensitive national security secrets . . . . Ibid. The Court held that in the case of the general privilege of confidentiality of Presidential communications, its importance must be balanced against the inroads of the privilege upon the effective functioning of the Judicial Branch. This balance was struck against the claim of privilege in that case because the Court determined that the intrusion into the confidentiality of Presidential communications resulting from in camera inspection by the District Court, with all the protection that a district court will be obliged to provide, would be minimal and therefore that the claim was outweighed by [t]he impediment that an absolute, unqualified privilege would place in the way of the primary constitutional duty of the Judicial Branch . . . . Id., at 706-707. Unlike United States v. Nixon , in which appellant asserted a claim of absolute Presidential privilege against inquiry by the coordinate Judicial Branch, this case initially involves appellant's assertion of a privilege against the very Executive Branch in whose name the privilege is invoked. The nonfederal appellees rely on this apparent anomaly to contend that only an incumbent President can assert the privilege of the Presidency. Acceptance of that proposition would, of course, end this inquiry. The contention draws on United States v. Reynolds, 345 U. S. 1, 7-8 (1953), where it was said that the privilege belongs to the Government and must be asserted by it: it can neither be claimed nor waived by a private party. The District Court believed that this statement was strong support for the contention, but found resolution of the issue unnecessary. 408 F. Supp., at 343-345. It sufficed, said the District Court, that the privilege, if available to a former President, was at least one that carries much less weight than a claim asserted by the incumbent himself. Id., at 345. It is true that only the incumbent is charged with performance of the executive duty under the Constitution. And an incumbent may be inhibited in disclosing confidences of a predecessor when he believes that the effect may be to discourage candid presentation of views by his contemporary advisers. Moreover, to the extent that the privilege serves as a shield for executive officials against burdensome requests for information which might interfere with the proper performance of their duties, see United States v. Nixon, 418 U. S., at 714; cf. Eastland v. United States Servicemen's Fund, 421 U. S. 491, 501-503 (1975); Dombrowski v. Eastland, 387 U. S. 82, 84-85 (1967) ( per curiam ), a former President is in less need of it than an incumbent. In addition, there are obvious political checks against an incumbent's abuse of the privilege. Nevertheless, we think that the Solicitor General states the sounder view, and we adopt it: This Court held in United States v. Nixon . . . that the privilege is necessary to provide the confidentiality required for the President's conduct of office. Unless he can give his advisers some assurance of confidentiality, a President could not expect to receive the full and frank submissions of facts and opinions upon which effective discharge of his duties depends. The confidentiality necessary to this exchange cannot be measured by the few months or years between the submission of the information and the end of the President's tenure; the privilege is not for the benefit of the President as an individual, but for the benefit of the Republic. Therefore the privilege survives the individual President's tenure. Brief for Federal Appellees 33. At the same time, however, the fact that neither President Ford nor President Carter supports appellant's claim detracts from the weight of his contention that the Act impermissibly intrudes into the executive function and the needs of the Executive Branch. This necessarily follows, for it must be presumed that the incumbent President is vitally concerned with and in the best position to assess the present and future needs of the Executive Branch, and to support invocation of the privilege accordingly. The appellant may legitimately assert the Presidential privilege, of course, only as to those materials whose contents fall within the scope of the privilege recognized in United States v. Nixon, supra . In that case the Court held that the privilege is limited to communications in performance of [a President's] responsibilities, 418 U. S., at 711, of his office, id., at 713, and made in the process of shaping policies and making decisions, id., at 708. Of the estimated 42 million pages of documents and 880 tape recordings whose custody is at stake, the District Court concluded that the appellant's claim of Presidential privilege could apply at most to the 200,000 items with which the appellant was personally familiar. The appellant bases his claim of Presidential privilege in this case on the assertion that the potential disclosure of communications given to the appellant in confidence would adversely affect the ability of future Presidents to obtain the candid advice necessary for effective decisionmaking. We are called upon to adjudicate that claim, however, only with respect to the process by which the materials will be screened and catalogued by professional archivists. For any eventual public access will be governed by the guidelines of § 104, which direct the Administrator to take into account the need to protect any party's opportunity to assert any . . . constitutionally based right or privilege, § 104 (a) (5), and the need to return purely private materials to the appellant, § 104 (a)(7). In view of these specific directions, there is no reason to believe that the restriction on public access ultimately established by regulation will not be adequate to preserve executive confidentiality. An absolute barrier to all outside disclosure is not practically or constitutionally necessary. As the careful research by the District Court clearly demonstrates, there has never been an expectation that the confidences of the Executive Office are absolute and unyielding. All former Presidents from President Hoover to President Johnson have deposited their papers in Presidential libraries (an example appellant has said he intended to follow) for governmental preservation and eventual disclosure. [12] The screening processes for sorting materials for lodgment in these libraries also involved comprehensive review by archivists, often involving materials upon which access restrictions ultimately have been imposed. 408 F. Supp., at 347. The expectation of the confidentiality of executive communications thus has always been limited and subject to erosion over time after an administration leaves office. We are thus left with the bare claim that the mere screening of the materials by the archivists will impermissibly interfere with candid communication of views by Presidential advisers. [13] We agree with the District Court that, thus framed, the question is readily resolved. The screening constitutes a very limited intrusion by personnel in the Executive Branch sensitive to executive concerns. These very personnel have performed the identical task in each of the Presidential libraries without any suggestion that such activity has in any way interfered with executive confidentiality. Indeed, in light of this consistent historical practice, past and present executive officials must be well aware of the possibility that, at some time in the future, their communications may be reviewed on a confidential basis by professional archivists. Appellant has suggested no reason why review under the instant Act, rather than the Presidential Libraries Act, is significantly more likely to impair confidentiality, nor has he called into question the District Court's finding that the archivists' record for discretion in handling confidential material is unblemished. 408 F. Supp., at 347. Moreover, adequate justifications are shown for this limited intrusion into executive confidentiality comparable to those held to justify the in camera inspection of the District Court sustained in United States v. Nixon, supra . Congress' purposes in enacting the Act are exhaustively treated in the opinion of the District Court. The legislative history of the Act clearly reveals that, among other purposes, Congress acted to establish regular procedures to deal with the perceived need to preserve the materials for legitimate historical and governmental purposes. [14] An incumbent President should not be dependent on happenstance or the whim of a prior President when he seeks access to records of past decisions that define or channel current governmental obligations. [15] Nor should the American people's ability to reconstruct and come to terms with their history be truncated by an analysis of Presidential privilege that focuses only on the needs of the present. [16] Congress can legitimately act to rectify the hit-or-miss approach that has characterized past attempts to protect these substantial interests by entrusting the materials to expert handling by trusted and disinterested professionals. Other substantial public interests that led Congress to seek to preserve appellant's materials were the desire to restore public confidence in our political processes by preserving the materials as a source for facilitating a full airing of the events leading to appellant's resignation, and Congress' need to understand how those political processes had in fact operated in order to gauge the necessity for remedial legislation. Thus by preserving these materials, the Act may be thought to aid the legislative process and thus to be within the scope of Congress' broad investigative power, see, e. g., Eastland v. United States Servicemen's Fund, 421 U. S. 491 (1975). And, of course, the Congress repeatedly referred to the importance of the materials to the Judiciary in the event that they shed light upon issues in civil or criminal litigation, a social interest that cannot be doubted. See United States v. Nixon, supra. [17] In light of these objectives, the scheme adopted by Congress for preservation of the appellant's Presidential materials cannot be said to be overbroad. It is true that among the voluminous materials to be screened by archivists are some materials that bear no relationship to any of these objectives (and whose prompt return to appellant is therefore mandated by § 104 (a) (7)). But these materials are commingled with other materials whose preservation the Act requires, for the appellant, like his predecessors, made no systematic attempt to segregate official, personal, and private materials. 408 F. Supp., at 355. Even individual documents and tapes often intermingle communications relating to governmental duties, and of great interest to historians or future policymakers, with private and confidential communications. Ibid. Thus, as in the Presidential libraries, the intermingled state of the materials requires the comprehensive review and classification contemplated by the Act if Congress' important objectives are to be furthered. In the course of that process, the archivists will be required to view the small fraction of the materials that implicate Presidential confidentiality, as well as personal and private materials to be returned to appellant. But given the safeguards built into the Act to prevent disclosure of such materials and the minimal nature of the intrusion into the confidentiality of the Presidency, we believe that the claims of Presidential privilege clearly must yield to the important congressional purposes of preserving the materials and maintaining access to them for lawful governmental and historical purposes. In short, we conclude that the screening process contemplated by the Act will not constitute a more severe intrusion into Presidential confidentiality than the in camera inspection by the District Court approved in United States v. Nixon, 418 U. S., at 706. We must, of course, presume that the Administrator and the career archivists concerned will carry out the duties assigned to them by the Act. Thus, there is no basis for appellant's claim that the Act reverses the presumption in favor of confidentiality of Presidential papers recognized in United States v. Nixon . Appellant's right to assert the privilege is specifically preserved by the Act. The guideline provisions on their face are as broad as the privilege itself. If the broadly written protections of the Act should nevertheless prove inadequate to safeguard appellant's rights or to prevent usurpation of executive powers, there will be time enough to consider that problem in a specific factual context. For the present, we hold, in agreement with the District Court, that the Act on its face does not violate the Presidential privilege.