United States v. Nixon

The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Nixon (1974), an important landmark in constitutional law, held that even the president of the United States has to comply with requests for evidence from criminal prosecutors.

In this case, President Richard Nixon was attempting to withhold audio recordings of Oval Office conversations that implicated him in a conspiracy to cover up burglaries orchestrated by members of his campaign. The episode as a whole—known as the Watergate scandal—represents one of the worst instances of government corruption and abuse of official ...