A Research On The US Independent Counsel System Under The Perspective Of Decentralization

The exposure of the "Watergate Scandal" revealed the misconduct of the Nixon administration’s abuse of administrative power and triggered a crisis of confidence in the government.In-depth analysis of the "Watergate Scandal",it is not difficult to find behind it is a structural crisis of separation of powers.In order to restore public trust and stabilize the constitutional system,the Carter administration passed the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.Among it,the "Special Prosecutor Law" established an Independent Counsel System to make up for the "weakness" of the internal supervision system of the administrative department.The Independent Counsel System has been in operation for more than 20 years and eventually ceased.The reason is not only the defects in its system design,but also the rigidity of the decentralization system which has caused the internal dilemma of government reform.This paper consists of four parts: The first part is the introduction,which mainly introduces the theoretical value and practical significance of the topic,the research situation of related content at home and abroad,the innovation of this article and the basic content and structure framework of the article.The second part starts from the reasons for the establishment of the Independent Counsel System,trying to recover the "source" of the Independent Counsel,which is supported by the profound and long-standing concept of decentralization system,as well as the "contingency" of specific historical space and time such as the "watergate incident",constitutes the factual conditions for the establishment of the Independent Counsel system.The third part focuses on the “flow” of the Independent Counsel System: the evolution of the independent counsel system.The Independent Counsel System has not been fixed once and for all,it is a five-year extension,at the end of each extension,Congress will reassess it to decide whether to re-authorize it.Through the investigation and prosecution of the Independent Counsel,we found that it had many institutional and political defects,so the Congress adjusted the law in 1982,1987 and 1994 respectively.This effort was ultimately due to the Independent Counsel Starr.Ending by the destructive power released in the Clinton investigation.The suspension of the Independent Counsel System is the result of multiple efforts,and it also shows the political ecology within the US government.The fourth part discusses the theoretical and practical significance of the Independent Counsel System under the perspective of constitutionalism.Constitutionality is a topic that Congress has been arguing over from the very beginning of the design of the Independent Counsel System.Eventually the US Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutional.The Independent Counsel Starr’s investigation of Clinton finally launched the impeachment mechanism.From the result,the original intention of the legislation of the Congress has been changed,and its political significance has exceeded the legal significance.From this point of view,the essence of the Independent Counsel System can be seen as a political experiment in which the Congress supervises the administrative branch.However,due to the lack of institutional design,its direction was difficult to control.In the new historical context,the traditional decentralization system is increasingly rigid and single,it is difficult to load complex and numerous political affairs,or to deal with party politics under the trend of political polarization.The Independent Counsel System refines the system of separation of powers and checks and balances.The power structure still has a good constitutional value.At the end of the article,the author explores the internal supervision dilemma of the US decentralization system and attempts to explain the modernity problems in the process of American modernization.