Trump v. Mazars Implications for the Federal Balance of Power Olivia Siemens
Abstract In Trump v. Mazars (2020), the Supreme Court held that congressional subpoenas for the President’s personal papers are subject to a higher standard of judicial review than routine subpoenas involving Executive Branch officials or agencies. It is not the intent of this article to opine on the merits of the Court’s ruling in Mazars, but rather to argue in favor of the narrowest possible reading of that opinion with regard to future oversight subpoenas for Executive Branch information. Failure to do so would a) overturn centuries of precedent stressing the Court’s limited authority to constrain congressional oversight prerogatives, and b) seriously disrupt the constitutional balance of power among the three branches of the federal government. If applied to all congressional subpoenas aimed at eliciting information from the Executive Branch, the four-part Mazars analysis could subvert Congress’s core constitutional functions; shield current and future presidential administrations from meaningful public accountability; and undermine the institutional legitimacy of the federal courts. When testing the validity of forthcoming oversight-related subpoenas, the Court should instead defer to the more lenient Watkins standard, enforcing congressional subpoenas so long as they serve a “legitimate legislative purpose.”
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