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Nevilledog

(51,197 posts) Thu Feb 4, 2021, 08:41 PM Feb 2021

To Try a President (never-before-published article about prosecuting Nixon)

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Adrienne LaFrance
@AdrienneLaF
This never-before-published article was intended for publication in The New York Times Magazine on September 15, 1974. Then, on September 8, President Ford pardoned Nixon, and the magazine pulled the article. Now, nearly 50 years later, you can read it:

To Try a President
Should Richard Nixon have faced criminal prosecution? A never-before-published article from 1974, written by a leading legal scholar, offers answers that speak to the present.
theatlantic.com
6:36 AM · Feb 4, 2021

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/harry-kalven-nixon/617899/

Strains on the Quality of Mercy: Should Mr. Nixon Stand Trial?

The question of whether Richard Nixon should stand trial for his role in the Watergate break-in and cover-up is complicated, unfortunately for him, by its intimate involvement in the continuing desire and need of the American people for an accounting and judgment on the case. For the past two years, our society and its institutions had been grinding slowly but inexorably toward a final determination, and though Mr. Nixon’s forced resignation amounted to a practical solution, it left open the legal and moral questions about his role. They sound an unresolved chord in American life.

To ask whether Mr. Nixon should stand trial stirs familiar perplexities about punishment and vengeance, about the rule of law, about tempering justice with mercy, and also a fresh perplexity about the relationship of politics to justice. But basically, a trial would afford the last chance, through the institutions of the society, to resolve the chord.

When Mr. Nixon was in office, lawyers were beset with esoteric questions of constitutional law. Now that he has left office, the search is for a commoner, more traditional answer. But if the questions have lost their technical ring, they are no less unique and difficult. In fact, the law has little guidance, if any, to offer on the question of whether Mr. Nixon should stand trial. The admirable formula that all men are equal under the law cannot put the question to rest, nor can the widespread, long-established practice of prosecutorial discretion. And the lawyer speaks to it only as a fellow citizen, perhaps guided a little by the perspectives of his discipline, which at least offer some alternatives to the difficult choice of total mercy or total punishment.

The question, in any event, will not simply go away. Mr. Jaworski may well decide not to prosecute, but he cannot do so inconspicuously, without giving his reasons. Whatever is done with Mr. Nixon will be equally a decision, an action.

*snip*