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Constitutional Conflict And Congressional Oversight, Andrew Mccanse Wright

Marquette Law Review

In matters of oversight, Congress and the President have fundamentally incompatible views of their institutional roles within the constitutional structure. This Article offers an explanation of divergent branch behavior and legal doctrine. Congress, much like a party to litigation, views itself as having fixed substantive rights to obtain desired information from the Executive and private parties. In contrast, the Executive views itself like a party to a business transaction, in which congressional oversight requests are the opening salvo in an iterative negotiation process to resolve competing interests between co-equal branches. In general, legislators want to litigate and executive officers want …