About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

56 Law & Contemp. Probs. 63 (1993)
At the President's Side: The Role of the White House Counsel in Constitutional Policy

handle is hein.journals/lcp56 and id is 885 raw text is: AT THE PRESIDENT'S SIDE: THE ROLE OF THE WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL IN CONSTITUTIONAL POLICY JEREMY RABKIN* I INTRODUCTION Whatever else it achieved in its first months in office, the Clinton Administra- tion made U.S. citizens more aware of the White House Counsel's Office. The Counsel's Office was at the center of the brief uproar that arose when the press discovered that presidential aides had manipulated the FBI to put White House patronage maneuvers (replacing career officials in the White House travel office with friends or relatives of President Clinton) in a better light.1 The apparent suicide of the Deputy Counsel, Vincent Foster, amidst mysterious circumstances, focused new attention on the Counsel's Office, all the more so as the Counsel's Office was accused of mismanaging and manipulating the investigation of Foster's death in peculiar ways.2 Counsel Bernard Nussbaum ultimately achieved the distinction of being the first White House Counsel whose activities were visible enough-and controversial enough-for respectable editorialists to condemn his personal performance and demand his removal from the office.3 If the Counsel's Office achieved more notoriety in the Clinton Administra- tion, its operations did not become easier to follow. But the role of the Counsel has never been easy to define or to assess. The White House Counsel is often described as the President's lawyer. By constitutional tradition and statutory provision, however, the president already has an official lawyer: the Attorney General of the United States. The Attorney General has had a place in the president's Cabinet-and an official role in providing legal advice to executive officials-from the time of President Washington. The Counsel is an innovation of recent decades. The Attorney General (along with other top officers in the Justice Department) must be confirmed by the Senate and remain available for frequent congressional appearances, while the Counsel and his aides are Copyright © 1993 by Law and Contemporary Problems * Associate Professor of Government, Cornell University. For comments on earlier drafts and/or on material contained here, I would particularly like to thank Nelson Lund, Lee Liberman, Charles Fried, John 0. McGinnis, Douglas Cox, Steven Calabresi, and Terrence Pell. 1. Thomas Friedman, White House Asked Aid of F.B.L in Dismissals, N.Y. TIMES, Aug. 25, 1993, at A18. 2. William Safire, When An Aide Dies Violently, N.Y. TIMES, May 25,1993, at A15; William Safire, The 28th Piece, N.Y. TIMES, Aug 12, 1993, at A25. 3. Editorial Desk, The Clues Left by Vincent Foster, N.Y. TIMES, Aug. 12, 1993, at A24.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most