Opinion ID: 594395
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Employee Papers and the Common Law

Text: 19 The Government points the court to various decisions that it claims establish, as common law, the proposition that an employer--including the government--owns the papers its employees create or maintain in the course of employment. There is no reason why this common law, the Government next asserts, should not apply to Mr. Nixon. Even the President, the Government recalls, is not above the law. Mr. Nixon responds that the case law reflects a more modest proposition: an employer owns only those papers its employees are under a specific, express legal duty to maintain or create. By all accounts, before the Presidential Records Act of 1978, 44 U.S.C. §§ 2201 et seq., Presidents were never subject to any such specific, express legal duty to create or maintain their papers. 20 We need not decide this debate over the content of the common law and the application of that law to the President. It is enough to note that precedent on point is hardly crystalline. Because we find no clear or clearly applicable common law rule, we hold that the robust tradition of private ownership here--recognized explicitly by Congress--controls. 21 Under the circumstances of this case, in which we find no directly controlling constitutional, statutory or common law requirements with respect to the presidential papers, we here look to history, custom and usage to determine the ownership of the Nixon papers. The Government does not disagree that this is the proper avenue of inquiry; however, it does insist that history, custom and usage indicate that both the American public and the President have [298 U.S.App.D.C. 257] interests in the materials and that PRMPA recognizes and protects those interests. We disagree. As described below, the clear import of the historical practice is completely at odds with the Government's view. 22