Good

/

Ace of Spades:

Supreme Court Seems Likely To Rule That the President Has Control Over, Get This, the Executive Branch

" " " Reformers " " " decided that the actually-responsible, actually-elected political leaders were too corrupt so we should give power to appointed bureaucrats who, of course, cannot be corrupt and only want What's Best for Everybody.

Ace’s next two paragraphs hit the nub of the matter:

A plethora of "independent" agencies were created. Into these agencies were poured executive power, taken from the actual Executive. And it was claimed the actual president could not fire the commissioners of these agencies, even if they were appointed by previous presidents and were now working to thwart the will of the current elected president.

It's this last part that got the most attention from the Supreme Court during oral arguments today. What kind of a system, they wondered, allows prior presidents, who no longer have any constitutional power -- like Joe Biden -- to essentially continue governing through the commissioners he appointed, stopping the actual Chief Executive of the United States from carrying out his duties?


….The Supreme Court's questions seem to indicate that they find this bizarre arrangement to be unconstitutional and will reverse a 1935 precedent called Humphrey's Executor and find that the executive power of the United States is entrusted to the elected Chief Executive and the appointments of prior presidents cannot bind him.

The Supreme Court signaled Monday that it's prepared to hand President Donald Trump another win in his drive to consolidate his power over federal agencies.

During arguments over Trump's dismissal of Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter, the high court's conservative majority appeared intent on overturning or effectively gutting a 90-year-old precedent that upheld restrictions on the president's ability to fire leaders of independent agencies across the executive branch.

"I think broad delegations to unaccountable independent agencies raise enormous constitutional and real world problems for individual liberty," Justice Brett Kavanaugh said during the arguments.

Overturning that precedent, known as Humphrey's Executor, has become a key goal for conservatives.

"The text and structure of the Constitution confer on the president the exclusive and illimitable power to remove executive officers, and as a result of that Humphrey's should be overruled," Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices on Monday, repeatedly calling the 1935 ruling "a decaying husk."

The White House told Slaughter in March that she was fired, without citing any concern about her performance or conduct. A federal appeals court ruled that Slaughter should be reinstated, but the Supreme Court said her dismissal could take effect while it considered the merits of her claim -- and now seems poised to rule against her.

FWIW: Conservatives often refer to federal agencies as “the Fourth Branch” but do so ironically, knowing that the Constitution established no such thing, and should permit no such thing. Democrats and many (most?) Republicans support the concept, because it allows them to pass vague, cozy-sounding laws in favor of motherhood, fluffy clouds and pure, sweet water, and, after preening before the cameras and mailing self-congratulatory announcements to their voters, turn it over to an agency they’ve created to enforce it with ever-increasing, onerous regulations and move on to the next “crisis”.

More on this at Powerline.

Supreme Court Poised to Restore Constitution?

“Today the Supreme Court heard arguments in Trump v. Slaughter, perhaps the most important case to come before the Court this term. The case tests the constitutionality of the “independent agencies” that Congress has established over the years–independent, because their commissioners are not under the control of the president.”

….

Press accounts indicate that the Court’s conservative majority seemed inclined to side with the Administration. Thus, the New York Times: “Justices Seem Ready to Give Trump More Power to Fire Independent Government Officials.”

The Supreme Court on Monday appeared poised to make it easier for President Trump to fire independent government officials despite laws meant to insulate them from political pressure in what would be a major expansion of presidential power.

“Absent from the Times’s partisan description is any acknowledgment of the controlling constitutional provision. Article II is devoted to the executive branch; its first sentence states: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” That’s it: the President is the executive branch. Congress’s establishment of supposedly “independent agencies” within the executive branch has been, in my opinion, plainly unconstitutional.

“The Constitution didn’t seem to loom large in the views of liberal justices:

Justice Sonia Sotomayor told the administration’s lawyer that “you’re asking us to destroy the structure of government” and to “take away from Congress its ability to protect its idea that a — the government is better structured with some agencies that are independent.”

“Ms Sotomayor may have her own opinions about how our government might be “better structured,” but her job–in case she has forgotten–is to apply the Constitution as written.

“Professor Phil Hamburger’s book Is Administrative Law Unlawful? is seminal here. Professor Hamburger addresses the issue more briefly here.”

I have often said that the government we live under is not the one that is described in the Constitution. A principal reason for this is that the branch of government that exercises the most power over us is the Fourth Branch, the one that the Constitution never mentions: the unelected alphabet soup of “independent” federal agencies. If the Court rules in the Administration’s favor, it will go a considerable distance toward establishing constitutional government, as well as political accountability. The president will now be responsible for the entire executive branch, and will be able to implement his or her policies throughout the executive branch. Which no doubt is what voters thought was happening all along.