But if the documents do, in fact, involve internal Justice Department deliberations, the court is likely to be quite reluctant to override the privilege claims unless Congress can identify a more concrete and legitimate purpose than it has to date.
The public welfare cannot override constitutional privileges, and if the rights of free speech and of a free press are, in their essence, attributes of national citizenship, as I think they are, then neither Congress nor any state, since the adoption of the 14th Amendment, can, by legislative enactments or by judicial action, impair or abridge them.
On the merits, we believe that the O.I.C.'s position, which rests principally on the proposition that 28 U.S.C. 535(b) overrides the attorney-client privilege, is misguided.
By accepting custodianship of records he 'has voluntarily assumed a duty which overrides his claim of privilege' only with respect to the production of the records themselves.
For example, small European states have periodically wielded their veto privileges to override the preferences of their larger, more economically and militarily powerful neighbors when negotiating European Union treaties, which require the unanimous consent of all EU members.
The administration cited a 1984 Justice Department legal opinion, never adjudicated in the courts, that said that a federal prosecutor cannot be compelled to bring a case seeking to override a president's executive privilege claim.
Like the Court of Appeals, we conclude that the §201(c) privilege does not override the Authors copyrights, for the Databases do not reproduce and distribute the Articles as part of a collective work privileged by §201(c).
Like the Court of Appeals, we conclude that the § 201(c) privilege does not override the Authors' copyrights, for the Databases do not reproduce and distribute the Articles as part of a collective work privileged by § 201(c).
The question before us is not the existence of the collective entity rule, but whether it contains any principle which overrides the personal Fifth Amendment privilege of someone compelled to give incriminating testimony.
So long as Judge Sweeney got the right elements in the mix, as she surely did, it is most doubtful that the claim privilege could be overridden under an abuse of discretion standard.
