{"id":972,"date":"2026-06-30T17:44:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T17:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=972"},"modified":"2026-06-30T17:44:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T17:44:00","slug":"the-ultimate-triumph-of-the-unitary-executive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=972","title":{"rendered":"The Ultimate Triumph of the Unitary Executive"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Nearly a half century ago, Ronald Reagan was elected on the promise of shrinking the federal government. Toward that end, his administration incubated a theory of presidential power that would give the president unprecedented control over all discretionary policy making within the executive branch. The new paradigm came to be known as \u201cunitary executive theory.\u201d Yesterday, in Trump v. Slaughter<\/i>, that theory emerged triumphant.<\/p>\n

Read more The Incredible Freedom of Not Trying to Look Good<\/a><\/p>\n

In the decision, the Supreme Court held that Article II of the Constitution guarantees a president\u2019s power to remove members of the Federal Trade Commission\u2014and effectively, all regulatory-commission members\u2014for any or no reason at all. Congress, according to the Court\u2019s 6\u20133 opinion, violated the separation of powers in 1914 by limiting the president\u2019s power to fire FTC commissioners to cases of \u201cinefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.\u201d In the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote for the majority, the FTC \u201cunquestionably exercises executive power, and must therefore be controlled by the Chief Executive, in whom such power is vested.\u201d As a result, he said, Rebecca Slaughter \u201cserved as the President\u2019s subordinate at the FTC\u2014and that the President was entitled to cut her tenure short.\u201d In so concluding, the Court explicitly overruled the unanimous 1935 decision Humphrey\u2019s Executor v. United States<\/i>, which held exactly the opposite with regard to the same agency.<\/p>\n

Slaughter, a Democratic lawyer and former Capitol Hill staffer appointed to the FTC by Joe Biden, was fired from the FTC by Donald Trump just two months into his second term, along with the only other remaining Democratic commissioner, Alvaro Bedoya, also a Biden appointee. Trump asserted no wrongdoing or incapacity on their part. He wrote only that their \u201ccontinued service on the FTC [was] inconsistent with [his] Administration\u2019s priorities\u201d and that they were removed from office \u201cpursuant to [his] authority under Article II of the Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Court\u2019s decision extends to all independent regulatory agencies, not just the FTC. Its central premise is that the president is constitutionally entitled to control all exercises of executive power\u2014the \u201cunitary executive theory.\u201d Roberts defined \u201cexecutive power\u201d as broadly as is possible: \u201cWhen an agency \u2018executes\u2019 a congressional mandate against private parties,\u201d he wrote, \u201cit exercises executive power\u2014no ifs, ands, or quasis about it.\u201d Because all of the regulatory agencies created by Congress issue rules and orders that affect private parties, they all would appear to exercise executive power within the Roberts definition.<\/p>\n

Even before Slaughter<\/i>, presidents could and did exercise powerful policy influence over regulatory agencies. Presidents appoint commission members. They designate each commission\u2019s chair, whom they can replace for any reason. They control agency budget submissions to Congress through the Office of Management and Budget. What Slaughter<\/i> makes dangerously plausible, however, is that presidents can now use their unfettered removal authority to leverage yet more administrative power to reward friends and punish those who disagree with the president.<\/p>\n

The one opinion to speak in greatest detail about the practical implications of the Court\u2019s holding is the concurrence by Justice Neil Gorsuch. He contends that Congress has \u201cdelegated\u201d to independent agencies \u201cvast legislative and judicial powers, effectively allowing these agencies to make laws and decide disputes under them.\u201d That observation prefaces Gorsuch\u2019s frequent complaint that the Court has been too indulgent in allowing Congress to give agencies \u201ctremendous sway over the Nation\u2019s affairs,\u201d but \u201cwith hardly any statutory guidance\u201d to limit their policy making. Slaughter<\/i>, he notes, may put an end to the so-called fourth branch of government, but, he says, it does not curb any of the powers Congress has delegated to the agencies. Instead, after Slaughter<\/i>, \u201cthe President can effectively exercise all those powers too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more I Spent a Week in a Hacker House<\/a><\/p>\n

It is not hard to imagine how a creative president could use his newfound control over all agencies. As Gorsuch points out, giving presidents unfettered control over the specialized agencies allows a retributive chief executive to launch attacks on his opponents from multiple directions: \u201cA business out of favor with the party in control of the White House might be able to stave off an FCC investigation. But can it survive a subsequent FTC rule declaring unlawful one of its longstanding trade practices? What about an in-house adjudication by OSHA? Or a prosecution for a new crime the SEC announces?\u201d<\/p>\n

What Gorsuch does not say is that Slaughter<\/i> also enables presidents to hobble agencies\u2014to perhaps even more disastrous effect. A president can eliminate an agency\u2019s bipartisan makeup by simply firing minority commissioners, as Trump did with the FTC. For agencies that can act only with a statutory quorum, a president can kneecap the agency simply by reducing its membership below quorum level. And this is key to understanding why overruling Humphrey\u2019s Executor<\/i> was so important to the Reagan revolutionaries. Congressional statutes already enable agencies to regulate ambitiously pursuant to their delegated powers. There are no statutes that authorize presidents to engage in what the law professors Jody Freeman and Sharon Jacobs call \u201cstructural deregulation,\u201d or, more plainly, sabotage.<\/p>\n

The prospect of kneecapping agencies might seem of less concern if it were as easy to challenge agency underperformance as it is to challenge overregulation, and if one were confident that the Supreme Court would be as vigilant in overseeing Republican administrations as Democratic ones. But neither is the case. A Court tilted against regulation has positioned itself as the ultimate, nondeferential arbiter of when legal challenges to the president are even permissible and whether those challenges have merit. The Court can also tell Congress if measures the legislative branch thought \u201cnecessary and proper\u201d to constrain the executive went too far.<\/p>\n

Justice Sonia Sotomayor is certainly correct in stating that \u201cthe result\u201d of Slaughter<\/i> \u201cis a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before.\u201d One might, however, say the same about the Roberts Court itself.<\/p>\n

Read more What AI Will Do to Art<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A half century ago, a new and radical legal theory emerged. 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