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Lillian Adams of Carbondale, IL:
My question is: What kinds of investigations can be under taken that will be relatively even handed and not have the Special Counsels who can go on forever in the most partisan of ways with unliimited funding ? Is there any way to conduct an investigation in a truly non-partisan way?
John Pitney, Associate Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College, responds:
As the question suggests, there is a profound dispute about the wisdom of
the independent-counsel statute. The Supreme Court upheld the law in the
case of Morrison v. Olson (487 U.S. 654 (1988)), but many observers agree
with Justice Scalia's dissent. The statute violates the separation of
powers, Scalia wrote, because it grants executive power to someone outside
the President's control. Existing checks on this power have not proved
effective. Jacob A. Stein, independent counsel in the investigation of
Attorney General Edwin Meese, told a judicial conference last year: "I
had no limits. I was astonished at the authority I had, and I felt it was
a personal test of my own sanity in the exercise of that authority. I
don't know whether others thought that I passed the test. But I had more
authority than anybody should have. I was reviewing myself."
Rep. Jay Dickey (R-AR) has introduced legislation to put
additional controls on independent counsels, including a limitation on
office expenditures to a two-year period, unless an congressional
appropriation specifically makes additional funds available. This
legislation has bipartisan support and deserves serious attention.
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