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Nixon v. Administrator of General Services
1. Disclosure: Professor Chandler was a summer associate at the firm that represented President Nixon in this matter but he did not work on this case. He did work on later challenges to control over the Nixon papers based on claims of Chadha violations (legislative vetoes).
2. I include this case to teach the Bill of Attainder. I have thus edited out many pages of material based on other issues such as separation of powers. I expect Nixon v. Administrator of General Services to play an important role should the Supreme Court resolve issues relating to President Biden's decision not to accept former President Trump's claim of executive privilege with respect to certain records.
3. Why couldn't Congress have written a statute that applied to all Presidents who had resigned the Presidency while an impeachment proceeding was pending? Would that have made the statute any better?
4. The majority makes much of the absence in the record of any description of the Act as punitive. Should this matter?
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