Supreme Court’s ‘turbocharged’ vision of the presidency
Adam Liptak is not mincing words:
“In letting the president remove the leaders of government agencies for no reason and in the face of statutes that required him to have a good one, the court’s six Republican appointees embraced a turbocharged vision of the presidency, one with vast powers and few checks,” the longtime New York Times reporter on the court writes.
The Trump v. Slaughter ruling last month “was an echo of the 2024 majority opinion in Trump v. United States, which granted President Trump, then running for a second term, substantial immunity from prosecution,” Liptak says.
Both opinions were written by Chief Justice John Roberts, and he was joined by all the Republican appointees and none of the Democratic appointees.
As in the Slaughter decision, Roberts “called for a vigorous and energetic president whose core responsibilities cannot be constrained by Congress or the courts,” Liptak says.
Both decisions reflect the unitary executive theory, which says the president should have complete control of the executive branch, he says.
“It follows, proponents of the theory say, that Congress is powerless to shield the leaders of independent agencies from being removed by the president,” he says.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent in the Slaughter case that “dozens of independent commissions are now likely to become purely executive agencies, shifting tremendous power over broad swaths of American life into the president’s hands.”
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