WaPo Editorial Explains Inherent Contempt

This is rather an interestingly timed piece of legal edification. The director of the Rutgers Constitutional Litigation Clinic, Frank Askin, writes in WaPo that under historic and undisturbed law, Congress can enforce its own orders against recalcitrant witnesses without involving the executive branch and without leaving open the possibility of presidential pardon. And a Supreme Court majority would find it hard to object in the face of two entrenched legal principles. (…) The distinction between criminal and civil contempt is well recognized. The punishment for criminal contempt is a set fine or jail term. A civil contempt punishment is framed in terms of either/or: either the defendant does X or suffers daily consequences until X is done. That concept is often explained by the aphorism that the defendant has the keys to the jail in his own pocket. He can free himself by obeying the court order. (The jailing of New York Times reporter Judith Miller for refusing to answer questions during the Scooter Libby investigation is a recent example.) Thus, the congressional alternative. Instead of referring a contempt citation to the U.S. attorney, a house of Congress can order the sergeant-at-arms to take recalcitrant witnesses into custody and have them held until they agree to cooperate -- i.e., an order of civil contempt. Technically, the witness could be imprisoned somewhere in the bowels of the Capitol, but historically the sergeant-at-arms has turned defendants over to the custody of the warden of the D.C. jail. (…) So, far from being defenseless against the president's refusal to prosecute or the threat of presidential pardon, Congress could take into its own custody defiant administration officials who refuse to cooperate with legitimate inquiries into executive malfeasance. Those targets would have the right to seek writs of habeas corpus from the federal courts, but as long as Congress could show a legitimate need for the information it was seeking pursuant to its legislative oversight functions, it would be standing on solid legal ground. Gosh, I wonder if Harriet Miers, Josh Bolton, and Robert Duncan read the opinion section of the Washington Post?