All Your Base Are Belong to Us, Nixon.
- The first thing the Court had to get out of the way was whether they should be hearing this case at all, since the District Court hadn't finalized its order and the case had just been appealed.
- Burger reviews some complicated precedent, way above Shmoop's pay grade, and concludes that, uh, it's all good.
- Besides, hearing the case would prevent a situation where the President of the United States might be held in contempt of court, and it takes forever for a court to sort out whether a president could even be held in contempt.
- Agreeing to hear the case would expedite things in an important and messy case.
- They could decide the issue of executive privilege, and the special prosecutor could get back to prosecuting his criminal case against the seven indicted guys.
- Expanding from where the last section left off, the Supreme Court explains that is simply not an "intra-branch" dispute as Nixon claims.
- The Courts have jurisdiction to review a claim of executive privilege made by the president.
- This section also details Nixon's appeal of the subpoena, based on the grounds of executive privilege, and brings up the question of whether a president can be held in contempt of court.
- Isn't this getting interesting?
- The Court agrees that "to require a President of the United States to place himself in the posture of disobeying an order of a court merely to trigger the procedural mechanism for review of the ruling would be unseemly, and would present an unnecessary occasion for constitutional confrontation" (I.5).
- Basically, they're saying that this is a legal gray area, and could be detrimental to the president's claim of privilege.