Among the modest number of widely-accepted generalizations about American history is the proposition that many subjects that were once ignored altogether or dealt with privately here, over the decades, come to be regarded as societal problems regulated best, or at least inevitably, by the national government in Washington. Whatever its applications otherwise, this description appears to fit the handling of the papers of Presidents of the United States from 1789 onwards. A backward step in this trend seemed to be signified on Pardon Day, September 8, 1974, when Philip W. Buchen, Counsel to the President, released two legal documents that expressed President Ford's conclusions about the Presidential materials of Richard Nixon. The bottom line was that the papers and other records, including tapes, retained during the Administration of former President Nixon in the White House offices “are the present property of Mr. Nixon.”

Beginning with these documents, this report will describe each of the key events from September, 1974 to the end of January, 1975 concerning the wise handling of Presidential materials. The chief focus will be on the litigation challenging Nixon's ownership, especially the participation as a party by The American Political Science Association. We will examine the initial judicial phase of this controversy including the ruling of Judge Charles R. Richey on January 31, 1975 favorable to the Association and its allies.

In every social science, there tends to be a recurrent and cyclical preoccupation with the lack of cumulativeness. Some attribute this to the familiar “absence of theory,” and lay it at the doorstep of “barefooted empiricism.” Others might see the culprit lurking in the conceptual morass that often passes for theory, and would suggest that grand schemata that are not — and usually cannot — be tested will hardly make for greater cumulativeness.

There seems to be more than a germ of truth in both of these suspicions, but let me suggest a third possible source of our disappointment. I refer to certain norms and practices found among both the theorizers and the empiricists: those folkways that we pick up in college and graduate school, and are seldom able to shake in the postdoctoral years. On the assumption that an awareness of them and their implications may lead to their gradual extinction, I itemize here a few of what may be our less attractive foibles. While some of them may be peculiar to the field of world politics, most seem to be found all across the discipline.