Of course Alito and Thomas would have allowed the government unlimited power. I am bit surprised to see Barret in the minority of this one.
They have repeatedly reduced Congressional powers, including today, where they basically said Congress can't setup genuinely independent agencies (in Slaughter). Or when they kneecapped the VRA.
Some of them likely subscribe privately to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory.
The law Congress passed set rules requiring cause for a firing of an FTC commissioner.
It appears they now lack that power that they've had for almost a century.
Or Alito's new "history and tradition" test, invented out of whole cloth to take out abortion but now being applied to all sorts of things Congress does.
"We can make rules the President has to follow" does not supersede the Constitution.
(Or act maliciously, as when Alito invented the new "history and tradition" test.)
SCOTUS has now given the executive retroactive uncheckable vetos. Yikes. "Those rules we agreed to, signed into law, and followed for the last 90 years? HAHA PSYCHE SUCKERS!"
Reminder: On the SAME DAY, the SAME JUSTICE issued an opinion that the President can't fire a Federal Reserve member, in Cook, saying it was "out of step with the statute Congress enacted and our nation’s tradition of central banking protected from political interference". You're asserting consistency that simply does not exist; the Court is starting with the desired ruling and working backwards from there.
Today, the Court ruled that Congress can make the Federal Reserve an independent agency, but not the FTC. Same day, same justice!
What are the rules, exactly?
>Slaughter determined that agencies congress had ceded to the executive branch had control of the executive.
Congress ceded FTC to the executive branch. Congress put the Federal Reserve in some magical land, outside the executive branch, that doesn't even make sense.
My theory was that SCOTUS ruled the executive had this power over the agencies executive branch. Seems SCOTUS doesn't want to touch federal reserve question with a 10 foot pole. But going back to my original theory, it is a slightly different framing, since everyone involved freely agrees FTC is an executive agency while the federal reserve does not enjoy this agreement.
I do agree the federal reserve as independent makes no sense but I don't think it's the same question posed since you're not starting with the assumption the agency in question is an executive agency. SCOTUS seems to have ruled that an agency in the executive branch has executive control, while not going so far as to determine that the federal reserve is in the executive branch which is an entirely different question.
It's important to note SCOTUS is too chickenshit to rule on anything but in the most narrow way possible. If you ask them to rule on something with a prior established fact that it's in the executive branch you're likely going to get a very narrow ruling that doesn't try to create a unifying theory of everything.
I think it's the core question; are there really rules at all?
The two rulings make that answer clear, I think.
Roberts in Cook says that firing was "out of step with the statute Congress enacted and our nation’s tradition of central banking protected from political interference". How is the FTC's setup in this regard not part of the same tradition? What part of the Constitution permits the Fed's existence outside of any of the branches? Why can Congress establish a central bank outside the Executive entirely, but not regulate the FTC?
Prove the federal reserve is in the executive branch, and that the ruling of Cook presumed it was, and then you have a point.
I fail to see the inconsistancy.
The US constitution lays out three AND ONLY three branches of government. The congress cannot create a fourth without an amendment. If they create an agency in the executive branch, by definition it reports to the head of the executive.
Sure. So explain the results of Trump v. Cook, which involve exactly that.
The same justice, on the same day, issued one opinion that says Congress can't put limits on firing FTC chairs, and another that Congress can put limits on firing Fed board members.
The ruling in Slaughter was not that president can fire commissioners no matter what branch they are in. It was never established in Trump v Cook that the federal reserve lies in the executive branch.
Your attempt here to falsely portray an inconsistency that doesn't exist. It's a different question as to whether the federal reserve is in the executive branch. You'll have to show the federal reserve is in the executive branch if you want the same ruling to apply or claim this inconsistency.
But that's insane, right?
"You can make an agency the President has no control over, but you can't make one the President has some control over."
It would be pretty nuts if the president could just fire whomever he wants no matter what branch they are in based on a simple declaration he considers them to be in the executive branch.
We are very lucky we got this outcome out of this, because at least on its face the warrant was pretty well-behaved: They didn't get any identifying information until they had aggressively narrowed suspects. If someone had a convenient CCTV camera where the call was placed it all would have been moot. It's very possible if this geofence plan had only identified one person, the guilty party, it would be very hard to argue it was unreasonably broad as well. And as Alito did point out, this ruling won't actually get the thief out of his case.
We got a win today where a win certainly wasn't expected.
Roberts has lost control of his court and is desperately trying to make it appear legitimate.
What does it mean for a Chief Justice to be in control of their court, and of course, for them to be out of control?
The other aspect I think in play here is that the current executive branch pretty much just ignores every court order it doesn't like, and the Court can't enforce any ruling it makes, because that's the executive branch's job. I think Roberts knows if the Court pulls against Trump very hard, it could lead to a showdown where Trump just... does what he wants anyways, which would destroy the perceived power of the Court. I think Roberts has tried to dodge a lot of law and a lot of rulings to avoid clear positions on the President which he would, in turn, ignore.
The CJ's foremost political role is to ensure the judicial branch of government is seen as a politically legitimate institution which wields its power against the other branches in a constitutionally and poltiically legitimate way. If that slips, congress can start hiring/firing; and the executive, in the end, controls the guns -- they can be arrested.
To avoid being arrested or fired, the court has to keep all sides believing the rules they set are fair.
They have no power, in the end, but the power they are allowed to have. They govern by consent of the other branches, and that's trivial to take away
That is entirely not at all what the us constitution says
You are entirely right, we really need to prosecute presidents who do not follow SCOTUS rulings, like [1] and [2]
[1] https://www.wsj.com/opinion/joe-biden-student-debt-forgivene...
[2] https://www.cato.org/blog/obama-administration-ignores-supre...
But I am indeed of the inclination that we should demand the rule of law from Presidents of all parties. Generally speaking, I am in favor of a significant downsizing of the authority of the President as a whole. They have far too many powers and are granted too much leniency to use them "in case of emergency" which has increasingly just turned into every President declaring everything they want to do an emergency. Presidents should be subject to prosecution for misconduct, and upheld to the highest standards of the law, and we should have systems in place to swiftly and effectively remove them if they do not meet them. The bar for impeachment and removal is too high when it is unattainable in a two-party system where the President controls one of those parties.
Our country does not need kings of any party.
> Article 50. In accordance with the interests of the people and in order to strengthen and develop the socialist system, citizens of the USSR are guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly, meetings, street processions and demonstrations.
https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/Russian/const/77cons02....
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which is to say, "constitutions" as pieces of paper, do not matter. A constitution isnt a document, its literally, how power is constituted by the people.
Paper has no magical power to bring about anything in the world.
One day, decades or centuries or millenia from now -- there will be no USA SC: at one point they will have been arrested, or killed, or retired and not replaced. At once point democracy in the US will fail, and the US will fail, and something else will replace it. Sic transit gloria mundi. So it goes. History goes on.
The world isnt a program, words are not its code. History goes along because power as insittuitionalised by groups of apes, comes and goes.