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In 1973, the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities asked AEI to assist it in assessing the major legislative implications of the evidence developed during the Watergate hearings. In asking AEI to provide the report, Committee chair Sam Ervin and Vice Chair Howard Baker noted that “the judgments of the members of your group will help us focus on the major issues, particularly since they will come from a nonpartisan group whose interest lies in improvement of our government.”
The request from this prominent congressional committee was an important indication of AEI’s growing stature in Washington. AEI agreed to take on the task and brought together a stellar advisory committee that included Alexander Bickel of Yale Law School, Paul Bator of Harvard Law School, Evron Kirkpatrick of the American Political Science Association, Aaron Wildavsky of Berkeley, Richard Scammon, director of the Elections Research Center, and James Q. Wilson of Harvard.
The report discussed campaign finance, political “espionage,” the role of the Justice Department in impeachment proceedings, and presidential power. In a discussion that echoes today, the authors wrote, “If Congress’s obvious first step is to refrain from further strengthening of the presidency, its second is to strengthen itself.” The AEI report was entitled: Watergate and the Law-Political Campaigns and Presidential Power.
Learn more about AEI’s work with the Watergate Committee here
In 1973, the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities asked AEI to assist it in assessing the major legislative implications of the evidence developed during the Watergate hearings.
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