The concept of executive privilege is not mentioned explicitly in the United States Constitution, but the Supreme Court of the United States ruled it to be an element of the separation of powers doctrine, and/or derived from the supremacy of executive branch in its own area of Constitutional activity.[1]
The Supreme Court confirmed the legitimacy of this doctrine in United States v. Nixon, but only to the extent of confirming that there is a qualified privilege. Once invoked, a presumption of privilege is established, requiring the Prosecutor to make a "sufficient showing" that the "Presidential material" is "essential to the justice of the case."(418 U.S. at 713-14). Chief Justice Burger further stated that executive privilege would most effectively apply when the oversight of the executive would impair that branch's national security concerns.

Originally posted by youdidntseeme
There exists a doctrine calledexecutive privilege.

It states that members f the executive branch, the president and others, can resist certain subpoenas while in office. It has been tested several times and the SCOTUS has upheld the privilege.

One of the earliest examples of this privilege is detailed here:

Thomas Jefferson was the first president to face this problem, and he insisted that the president could not be independent of the judiciary if "he were subject to the commands of the latter" and "if the several courts could bandy him from pillar to post." Similarly, in his Commentaries on the Constitution (1833), Justice Joseph Story concluded that the president must be allowed to perform his duties "without obstruction...accountable only to his country, and to his own conscience."

source

As we can see the Justice Story set the precedent by allwing the resistance of the subpoena by allowing the the POTUS to use his own conscience to make the decision. Obama will not appear in the court and there will be no recourse by the GA judge but to accept this fact. I think the GA judge is only doing this to grab headlines anyway. He knows the privilege exists, and if he doesnt, he will soon.

edit on 23-1-2012 by youdidntseeme because: (no reason given)

Originally posted by r3axion
reply to post by Flatfish

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Did you conveniently overlook my fact? How about this one? I'm sure you would purposely ignore them because they aren't exactly in Barry's favor.

Originally posted by r3axion
I guess we're super dumb!