Law Fellow Will Be Featured At House Impeachment Parley

A Senior Fellow at the Law School will address two congressional conferences this week on the constitutional issues surrounding impeachment and executive privilege.

Raoul Berger, Warren Senior Fellow in American Legal History, will be the featured speaker at today's seminar for congressmen and their staffs and will take part in a Senate sponsored roundtable discussion on October 4.

Berger took part in a similar Senate conference during March, at which time he concentrated primarily on the question of executive privilege. He said Monday that he has received over 250 inquiries from members of Congress about impeachment and executive privilege since the spring.

Berger has recently published studies on these two subjects.

Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) is sponsoring today's seminar in the Gold Room of the Rayburn Office Building. Berger is expected to concentrate on the question of whether the president or vice-president can be indicted while still in office.

A spokesman for ADA said yesterday that Berger "can hardly ignore" the constitutional problems raised by Vice President Spiro Agnew's letter to House Speaker Carl Albert requesting a House review of the charges against him when the Law Fellow addresses the members of the House.

Agnew delivered his letter to Albert on Tuesday. In it the vice president said that only the Congress, and not the courts, is empowered to act on the charges against him while he is still in office.

Berger would not comment on Agnew's position when contacted Monday evening, saying that comment would be "premature and speculative."

The ADA spokesman said that it is sponsoring the seminar for congressmen in order to help congress to prepare for impeachment.

"Bringing Berger in is part of that process," the ADA spokesman said.

The spokesman also said that ADA is holding the seminar for the House rather than the Senate because "impeachment begins with the House."

ADA expects the seminar to be well attended. "We're worried about fitting everyone into the room" the spokesman said in reference to congressional interest in impeachment.

Non-support

The ADA does not currently support impeachment of the president, but it will hold a meeting of its National Board during the weekend to reconsider that position.

Berger, the author of Impeachment: The Constitutional Problems and of an upcoming book on executive privilege, will speak at the round-table discussion organized by Senators Harold Hughes (D.-Iowa) and Ervin (D.-N.C.) along with Abram Chayes '43, professor of Law, and 12 other prominent legal scholars.