The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority signaled support for President Donald Trump in a major case involving his firing of FTC member Rebecca Slaughter. The decision could reshape presidential authority and challenge a 90-year-old precedent known as Humphrey’s Executor. Here’s what happened in court, what the justices said, and why this case could redefine the limits of executive power.
00:00The one thing CELA Law made pretty clear, I think, is that Humphrey's executor is just a dried husk of whatever people used to think it was,
00:23because in the opinion itself, it described the powers of the agency it was talking about, and they're vanishingly insignificant, has nothing to do with what the FTC looks like today, and yet it seems to be your primary authority.
00:41It was addressing an agency that had very little, if any, executive power, and that may be why they were able to attract such a broad support on the court at the time.
00:56Humphrey's executor stands as an indefensible outlier from that line of authority.
01:04It's holding that federal agencies can exercise quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial powers that form no part of the executive power has not withstood the test of time.
01:17Humphrey's must be overruled. It has become a decaying husk with bold and particularly dangerous pretensions.
01:23It was grievously wrong when decided, and cases from Morrison to Trump have thoroughly eroded its foundations.
01:31The court has repudiated Humphrey's reasoning and confined it to its facts, but it continues to generate confusion in the lower courts,
01:39and it continues to tempt Congress to erect, at the heart of our government, a headless fourth branch, insulated from political accountability and democratic control.
01:48So the result of what you want is that the president is going to have massive, unchecked, uncontrolled power,
02:00not only to do traditional execution, but to make law through legislative and adjudicative frameworks.
02:07Neither the king, nor parliament, nor prime ministers, England at the time of the founding ever had an unqualified removal power.
02:22You're asking us to say that at a time, the founding, when the Constitution doesn't speak about this at all,
02:29where there was robust debate over this issue among legal scholars at the time,
02:37that we ourselves have said repeatedly in Humphrey's and other cases, Wiener, even in Myers,
02:46that those cases you mentioned did not establish this absolute power of the president.
02:54You're asking us to destroy the structure of government and to take away from Congress its ability to protect its idea
03:06that the government is better structured with some agencies that are independent.
03:14The president's constitutional duty to execute the law does not give him the power to violate that law with impunity,
03:22but petitioners claim that the president was free to fire Commissioner Slaughter without cause
03:27in violation of the FTC Act as authoritatively construed by this court.
03:32And, they urge, even if that firing was illegal, there is nothing that any court anywhere at any time could do to remedy that violation.
03:42The district court correctly rejected both arguments, and its judgment should be affirmed.
03:46On the merits, multi-member commissions with members enjoying some kind of removal protection
03:51have been part of our story since 1790.
03:54So, if petitioners are right, all three branches of government have been wrong from the start.
04:00Congress and prior presidents have been wrong to jointly create early founding-era commissions
04:07and more than two dozen traditional independent agencies since 1887.
04:12And this court was wrong to repeatedly bless those laws
04:15and to unanimously uphold the exact same removal provision at issue here
04:20and Humphrey's executor almost a century ago.
04:26That if petitioners get their way, everything is on the chopping block.
04:30And we're not just talking about the FTC.
04:34Opposing counsel said, we're not challenging, right now, the Federal Reserve.
04:38We're not challenging Article I courts.
04:40But there is absolutely no principled basis for carving those very important institutions out of their rule.
04:46You're right that the solicitor general was pressed quite legitimately about things like the tax court
04:53and the claims court, et cetera, et cetera.
04:55But I don't know that you can make the argument that the logic of his argument
05:02is going to cause these allegedly revolutionary results
05:07without being prepared to explain more concretely than you have the limits of your own argument.
05:13I mean, I could go down the list with you of the cabinet officers
05:18and ask you whether you think they could be headed by a multi-member commission
05:24whose members are not subject to at-will removal by the president.
05:31Shall we do that?
05:31How about Veterans Affairs?
05:35How about Interior?
05:36Labor, EPA, Commerce, Education?
05:39What am I missing?
05:40Agriculture.
05:41Agriculture.
05:42General Soura, can I ask you about the Federal Reserve?
05:48The other side says that your position would undermine the independence of the Federal Reserve,
05:54and they have concerns about that, and I share those concerns.
05:57So how would you distinguish the Federal Reserve from agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission?
06:04We recognize and acknowledge what this court said in the Wilcox-Harris State opinion,
06:08which is that the Federal Reserve is a quasi-private, uniquely structured entity
06:12that follows a distinct historical tradition of the first and second banks of the United States.
06:16There's two adjectives there, an adjective and an adverb, unique and distinct.
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