Nixon was accused of covering-up a burglary in the Watergate building. He had also been accused of recording secret meetings, and he refused to give the recordings to the authorities by using the excuse of "executive privilege."
At the end of the 18th century, the Constitution of the United States granted them this attribute as a guarantee of judicial independence. The issue is that, two hundred years later, the life expectancy of magistrates doubles or triples that of 1787. In an article entitled "The oldest courts in history," the American digital magazine Slate collected a series of descriptive statistics. About 12% of federal district judges are over eighty years old. In 2011, eleven federal judges had more than ninety, compared to the four that were twenty years ago. The number of octogenarians and nonagenarians doubled in the last two decades. The most extreme case was that of Judge Wesley Brown of Kansas, appointed in the time of John F. Kennedy, who held office until he died, at 104, in 2012.
The risk of senility in people who administer justice is seen as a problem even by some of their colleagues. According to the Wall Street Journal's judicial blog, Jack Weinstein, federal judge in Brooklyn, suggested modifying the codes of ethics of the Judiciary so that magistrates could report their health problems. Judge Boyce Martin opined that his veteran teammates should undergo regular mental and physical tests.
Some of the differences between the Athens jury practice and modern Unite States are:
1. Athens only allowed a very small group of men who owned property and who had completed their military training and were resident in Athens to vote. Women, slaves, children and foreigners were excluded from being full citizens and could not Vote.
2. In Athens, the elections were done through a system of lottery not by choosing a particular person to run for office.
3. Athens elected people did not have to have a special legal training unlike the modern US, where people have to go into a law school to work as a judge or lawyer.
4. People were arrested by citizens no by a formal police and they were tried and defended by other citizens rather than lawyers.
5. Adult male citizens who had the grace of voting had to go to the Athenian assembly on a regular basis to debate and vote on important issues like going to war, they also acted as jurors in the law courts.
<em>The only similarity</em> between the two was the fact that they were both democracies where people were given authority in the political system.
