When was executive privilege first used

Every President to date has used this power in one way or another, although some have used it more famously than others. Here are some of the biggest examples. As with so much of the presidency, George Washington set the precedent for executive privilege. After a failed military operation against Native Americans, Congress wanted to know what happened. It sought records and testimony from White House officials.

Washington and his cabinet agreed that a President had the right to refuse to these requests in the name of national security. Washington also later argued that the House of Representatives had no right to see the Jay Treaty signed between the U.

Eventually, he relented in both of these cases, but the precedent of asserting such authority was set. Some, including President Lyndon B. Johnson , believed that Eisenhower went too far with executive privilege.

Johnson made a point to say that if his administration were to use executive privilege, he would be the sole one to invoke it, much like his predecessor, John F. Both Presidents used it sparingly. While the previous two Presidents helped to define executive privilege, President Richard Nixon was the one who really brought it to the forefront of American politics. Executive privilege had always been nominally used in defense of the public interest, but Nixon attempted to use it to protect himself and other advisors during the Watergate investigation.

In the landmark Supreme Court case U. Nixon , the Supreme Court unanimously declared that executive privilege is constitutional and sometimes necessary for national security. Nixon had ever made such an extreme assertion of executive privilege in peacetime.

Though plenty of others have invoked the idea, Nixon remains to this day the president most closely associated with the concept. In fact, the only Supreme Court case on executive privilege is United States v. Nixon , which came about when he claimed executive privilege during the Watergate investigation to get out of a grand jury subpoena and avoid handing over recordings of his conversations in the White House.

What is the limit to its use and how will it be enforced are questions that continue to be debated. Many scholars worried about that problem as soon as U. So presidents have been very reluctant to assert executive privilege, and then the courts have tried to duck the issue, and they can. But the way things are going now, it looks not likely to be duckable — although you never know. Write to Olivia B. Waxman at olivia. The president argued that he could refuse a request for documents in the name of national security.

In time, though, he handed them over. Jefferson refused. The Supreme Court said he had to comply. In the end, he refused to testify in person but provided select documents. Jackson declined and was censured, but held onto the documents. President Grover Cleveland used it repeatedly to prevent Congress from reviewing documents related to his executive appointments to government positions.

When President Theodore Roosevelt prosecuted U. Steel for antitrust violations, the Senate demanded to see his papers on the subject. Roosevelt denied the request, then moved the documents to the White House to prevent their being seized. Eisenhower wanted to maintain the secrecy of conversations he had with his advisors about McCarthy and communists. He also wanted to keep sensitive documents from public view. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson rarely used it, but President Richard Nixon relied on it to protect himself and his advisors from the Watergate investigation.