Free Republic

During the oral argument over Trump v. Slaughter at the Supreme Court, Justice Elena Kagan got seriously exercised. “You’re asking us to destroy the structure of government!” Trump’s solicitor general, John Sauer, wisely declined to respond. She went on. “Where else have we so fundamentally altered the structure of government?” Indeed. The 1934 Humphrey’s Executor case did exactly that as the New Deal got into high gear during FDR’s reign. The Constitution defines three, not four, branches of government. Article I defines all the bits and pieces about the legislative branch. In particular, Section 8 lists the things that Congress...

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Trump v. Slaughter, the case challenging limitations on the President's ability to remove members of the Federal Trade Commission. In resolving this question, the Court will consider whether to narrow or overrule Humphrey's Executor. Perhaps to aid in the Court's deliberations, today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decided the combined cases of Harris v. Bessent and Wilcox v. Trump, concerning the limitations on removal of members of the Merit System Protection Board and National Labor Relations Board. In Harris, a divided panel concluded that the President...