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Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark says that during his term of office he resolved the dilemma by distinguishing between policy and legal matters. The President, says Clark, "can use discretion with respect to policy, but he cannot interpret the law to suit his own needs, politics, even judgments. The power of the President in legal matters is the power of dismissal, not the power of superseding his legal judgment for that of the Attorney General." That power could thus be used to fire Jaworski if the President were willing to face the consequences.
Clark finds support for his view in The Jewels of the Princess of Orange, an advisory opinion written in 1831 by Attorney General Roger Taney, who later became Chief Justice. That ruling involved President Andrew Jackson, who wanted a reluctant U.S. District Attorney to put an end to a case involving the princess's stolen jewels, which had been seized by U.S. customs officials; for diplomatic reasons, Jackson wanted to help the princess get the jewels back quickly. If the district attorney refused to drop the case, wrote Taney, "the prosecution, while he remained in office, would still go on, because the President himself could give no order to the court ... [Instead] the removal of the disobedient officer and the substitution of one more worthy in his place" was the best solution. In other words, prosecutors have authority all their own; the President may not exercise that authority himself but can influence it through his hiring and firing power. The Clark-Taney view would therefore support Jaworski's right to sue until and unless he is removed from office.
There are additional difficulties resulting from the President's stance as chief law enforcer. One important example: Did mounting his own investigation when he heard about the cover-up meet Nixon's responsibility? Scott Bice, associate dean of the University of Southern California law school, argues that "there is at least a responsibility to start the machinery of prosecution." EXperts generally agree that dispatching a couple of White House aides was not an adequate reaction. "He should have immediately informed the Department of Justice and professionalized the investigation," says former Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. A top lawyer in the Justice Department elaborates: "Let us suppose the Attorney General learned the same facts. We would all expect him to turn that information over to the criminal division immediately." By those standards, the Justice official says, "if the President did not have a reasonable motive for withholding his knowledge of the coverup, then he could be guilty of an obstruction of justice." And he would be guilty partly because he was the head of the legal system, not in spite of that fact. As former Attorney General Elliot Richardson puts it, "The President, like anyone else in law enforcement, is subject to the requirements of the law."