Senator Sam Ervin, Last of the Founding Fathers by Karl E. Campbell

Author:Karl E. Campbell [Campbell, Karl E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mom 04/05/2014
ISBN: 9780807831564
Goodreads: 1819927
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2007-11-19T06:00:00+00:00

During the Nixon administration Senator Ervin led the congressional countero√ensive against the expanding power of the executive branch. Editorial cartoon by Gibson M.

Crockett, Washington Star-News , 1973. A copy is in the Sam Ervin Library and Museum, Western Piedmont Community College, Morganton, North Carolina. Copyright 1973, 1974, 1975 The Washington Post . Reprinted with permission.

and Wisconsin’s William Proxmire had been leading a handful of senators who wanted to cut o√ its funding. Ervin was not among them. Presidential aide Tom Charles Huston, however, saw an opportunity to ‘‘regain the initiative on the issue of student violence’’ by reinvigorating the sacb and granting it broad new investigatory powers. The president agreed and quietly issued his executive order on 2 July.Ωπ

Congress learned about Nixon’s new plans for the sacb when the board’s chairman casually revealed the executive order during hearings before the Senate Appropriations Committee. The committee quickly invited Assistant Attorney General Robert Mardian to explain how the president could give the sacb powers Congress had never intended it to have. Mardian told the senators that the president had relied upon his ‘‘inherent’’ constitutional powers in reshaping the sacb. Committee member Roman Hruska, who also sat on Ervin’s two subcommittees, whispered to his aide, ‘‘When Sam hears that he’ll hit the ceiling.’’ He did. Ervin complained: ‘‘We hear ‘inherent power’ all the time these days. ‘Inherent power’ is just the modern equivalent of the divine right of kings.’’ After hastily convening hearings before the Separation of Powers Subcommittee, the senator proposed legislation to restrict the activities of the sacb.Ω∫

The Nixon administration had initiated yet another clash with Ervin in June 1971, when the Justice Department launched an attack on the ‘‘Speech or Debate’’ immunity of members of Congress. While the Supreme Court was trying to decide whether or not to allow the publication of the Pentagon Papers, Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska began to read excerpts from the controversial document aloud in a late night meeting of a Senate subcommittee. The Justice Department retaliated by subpoenaing one of Gravel’s congressional aides in order to question him on how the senator acquired a copy of the supposedly top-secret papers. Ervin rushed to Gravel’s aid, not so much to defend him personally but to protect the independence of Congress. Ervin characterized the administration’s subpoena as ‘‘a direct and broadscale attack on the rights of all Senators, and upon the constitutional guarantees which have been established to protect the Congress from harassment by a vindictive Executive.’’ Gravel sued to stop the subpoena, and the case reached the Supreme Court in 1972. Ervin represented the Senate during oral arguments.

When the justices disagreed with Ervin and ruled that the Constitution did not immunize a legislator from proceedings involving possible crimes committed by a third party, Ervin blasted the decision as ‘‘a clear and present threat to the continued independence of Congress.’’ He also began to draft a bill to reverse the Court’s decision.ΩΩ

242

a time of doubt and fear

By the end of Nixon’s first term, Ervin had proposed legislation to counter every one of the president’s challenges to congressional authority.

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