The Ethics in Government Act of 1978 is a United States federal law that was passed in the wake of the Nixon Watergate scandal and the Saturday Night Massacre.
Title I requires those in the public service sector to fill out financial disclosure forms which include the sources and amounts of income, gifts, reimbursements, the identity and approximate value of property held and liabilities owed, transactions in property, commodities, and securities, and certain financial interests of a spouse or dependent.
The director is charged with providing direction on Executive Branch policies of disclosure, and collaborates with the Attorney General in investigations of ethics violations.
If so, he or she must have a special prosecutor appointed who has all the power of the Department of Justice office except those specific to the Attorney General.
The special prosecutor has the authority to send any information to the United States Congress that he or she deems relevant and can provide counsel in issues that may call for impeachment of the person under investigation.
The special prosecutor can only be removed by impeachment and conviction by congress, or by the Attorney General for "substantial improprieties" or a physical or mental condition that affects performance.
Justice Antonin Scalia provided critiques of the Act, based on both Constitutional law and the potential for harm in practice, in his dissenting opinion in the case Morrison v. Olson.
Justice Scalia, a judicial conservative, noted that the U.S. Constitution granted consolidated power to enforce the law exclusively to the Executive Branch.
He believed that the House of Representatives' investigation through the use of a special prosecutor "[arose] out of a bitter power dispute between the President and the Legislative Branch".
Democratic Representative David R. Bowen of Mississippi called the ethics climate of the time a "witch-hunt".
It allowed for legal harassment of political opponents, even in cases that prosecutors stated they would have dropped in any other federal court.