House Committee v. Miers

I have a fun assignment in con law this week. We are going over the case mentioned in the title of this post. It stems from the Federal judge firings that happened a little while ago. The House of Rep. wanted some of the presidents aids to come before the house oversight committee and the president refused to hand them over. Usually when the house orders a subpoena and some fails to show they can hold that person in contempt and send federal marshals to arrest them. The marshals of course are part of the executive so in this case if congress asked the marshals to arrest presidential aids, most likely the president would say no. When two branches contradict each other this is a called a constitutional crisis. So instead of holding the aides in contempt the house sued the president. The district court judge ruled in favor of the house, saying that the executive need to hand over Miers. So, the teacher divided the class into the two sides and, we will argue it in class as if we were in the supreme court. On Tuesday the professor will pull names out of a hat and you are either represent the Executive, the Legislative or the Judges. I am going to bring a fake gavel just in case I get called up as a judge. We are supposed to represent specific judges (Roberts, Thomas, Scalia...)and I hope I get picked for that job so much. Peace out bitches