Fed Rule Crim Proc 17(c)

This law establishes a right for a subpoena to order a witness to produce any books, papers, documents, data, or other objects to be used as evidence (In this case, Nixon's tapes). The same law also allows the subpoena to be quashed (rejected) if the demands are unreasonable or oppressive, like if you had to produce evidence of every single time in the past ten years you guessed wrong about who'd get the final rose.

Executive Privilege

Privileged communication is a kind of protected communication that takes place between two people in certain kinds of professional relationships, like doctors, lawyers, and clergy. Executive privilege is the president's "Get Out of Jail Free" card (in theory, anyway). It's a power that the President of the United States may wield to quash any subpoena trying to access information or personnel of the executive branch by the judicial and legislative branches. Nyah, nyah.

In Camera Examination

This is just a fancy legal way of saying "examine in private." It's Latin for "in a chamber."

Separation of Powers

This really neat thing that the Founding Fathers did. Inspired by ancient Greece, the government would be separated into executive, legislative, and judicial branches, allowing a system of checks and balances that would prevent one branch from gaining too much power over the others and acting like they own the place.

Special Appearance

A special appearance on SNL and special appearance in law are two very different things. In law, a special appearance is made in a civil court in another state to challenge the personal jurisdiction that the court has over the defendant.

Impeachment

Impeachment gives the legislative branch (Congress) the power to charge a civil officer of the government with a crime. But just because you're impeached, doesn't mean you're removed from office. The House of Representatives puts forward the Articles of Impeachment (the grounds for accusation), and the Senate rules on them (the trial). For example, Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were both impeached by the House but not removed from office, because they were acquitted by the Senate.

Special Prosecutor

A special prosecutor is a lawyer from outside the government who's appointed to investigate the wrongdoing of a government official (or in this case officials) while in office. They serve at the pleasure of the president, as Archibald Cox unfortunately found out.

Writ of Certiorari

In legalese "writ" means an order. "Certiorari" means to be more fully informed. It's a fancy way of getting a lower court to deliver a case to a higher court (like the Supreme Court) so it may review it. This is how the Supreme Court gets many of its cases. The Supremes may choose to grant certiorari, i.e., hear the case, or not.

Intra-Executive

This phrase is littered throughout the U.S. v. Nixon, and it took Shmoop longer than we care to admit to really understand it. This simply means "within the executive branch." Why didn't we get that?

Accardi

Not only a Lucchese Crime Family mobster's last name, but also a legal doctrine. The Accardi Doctrine simply states that an agency must follow its own regulations. They needed a doctrine to tell them that?