Can Justice Department officials effectively investigate wrongdoing
within their own administrations without relying on an independent counsel?
In Prosecution among Friends political scientist David
Alistair Yalof explores the operation of due process as it is navigated within
the office of the attorney general and its various subdivisions.
The attorney general holds a politically appointed
position within the administration and yet, as the nation’s highest ranking law
enforcement officer, is still charged with holding colleagues and superiors
legally accountable. That duty extends to allegations against those who had a
hand in appointing the attorney general in the first place: Even the President
of the United States may be enmeshed in a Justice Department investigation
overseen by the attorney general and other department officials.
To assess this fundamental problem, Yalof examines
numerous cases of executive branch corruption—real or alleged—that occurred
over the course of four decades beginning with the Nixon administration and
extending up through the second Bush administration.
All of these cases—Watergate, Whitewater and others—were
identified and reported to varying degrees in the press and elsewhere. Some
garnered significant attention; others drew only limited interest at the time.
In all such cases the attorney general and other
officials within the executive branch were charged with initially assessing the
matter and determining the proper road for moving forward. Only a handful of
the cases resulted in the appointment of a statutorily protected independent
counsel.
Yalof, associate professor of political science at the
University of Connecticut, won the 1999 Richard E. Neustadt Award for the Best
Book on the Presidency with his title, Pursuit of Justices: Presidential
Politics and the Selection of Supreme Court Nominees (University of Chicago
Press).
--Paige Bukowski
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