Executive Privilege: Presidential Power, Secrecy, and Accountability

The definitive resource on the topic of executive privilege, now in a revised and updated fifth edition that includes the Biden presidency.

Executive Privilege—called “the definitive contemporary work on the subject” by the Journal of Politics—is widely considered the best in-depth history and analysis of executive privilege and its relation to the proper scope and limits of presidential power.

The expanded fifth edition picks up where the fourth edition left off in 2019, with President Donald Trump’s bold assertion of a “protective executive privilege” that recognizes no balancing powers against the executive branch. In addition to an expanded analysis of the battle over the Mueller Report, the controversy surrounding the citizenship question on the 2020 census, and the White House security clearances dispute, new sections examine the conflict over the report on steel and aluminum tariffs and the investigation into missing presidential records stored at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, some of which were marked as classified.

Mark J. Rozell and Mitchel A. Sollenberger have also added a new chapter on President Joe Biden, whom the authors regard as taking a measured approach to questions of secrecy and privilege. This chapter recounts how Biden handled former President Trump’s executive privilege claims during the January 6th investigation, while also managing the controversy surrounding his own classified documents dispute and the investigations into his son, Hunter Biden.

With its thorough and authoritative analysis of the many controversies regarding presidential privilege and accountability from the founding of the nation to Trump and beyond, Executive Privilege remains an essential resource.

Mark J. Rozell is the Founding Dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, where he holds the Ruth D. and John T. Hazel Faculty Chair in Public Policy. He is the coauthor with Jeffrey Crouch and Mitchel A. Sollenberger of The Unitary Executive Theory: A Danger to Constitutional Government, also from Kansas.

Mitchel A. Sollenberger is professor of political science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. He is the author of The President Shall Nominate: How Congress Trumps Executive Power and coauthor with Mark J. Rozell of The President’s Czars: Undermining Congress and the Constitution—both from Kansas.