Originally published at: As Trump Marauds Through Executive Branch, SCOTUS May—MAY—Have A Red Line
As President Donald Trump and his billionaire compatriot Elon Musk rampage lawlessly through the federal government, they’ve pointedly ignored a key distinction within the executive branch: agencies that are explicitly under the president’s control versus independent agencies that Congress set up to be insulated from elections, presidents and politics. The administration has already fired board…
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“But if the Court is willing to make up stuff about immunity, what else could it make it up?
Pretty much says it all, no?
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I feel like the only safe course these days is to assume the worst, then be glad for any daylight that remains between that expectation and reality.
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I’m not gonna hold my breath waiting for SCOTUS to do the right thing.
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Supreme Court Justices may find out sooner than they think that they too can be replaced by presidential whim. I’m sure that DonOLD has Mel working on gag for ,
and that sword will be confiscated.
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There’s no explicit authority in Article I for Congress to create agencies of the executive branch, so it would appear to be derived from the “general Welfare” clause of section 8.
There is also no general grant of authority in Article II for the president to wield all executive authority. But section 2 makes it abundantly clear that the president’s appointment authority over the executive branch is limited to those positions whose existence is “established by Law,” i.e., legislation enacted by Congress. There are no textual limits on Congress’s authority to establish those positions and the manners in which they are to operate.
The unitary executive thing is atextual bullshit. Just like John Roberts likes his legal theories.
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[Agencies] set up by Congress to be insulated from partisan influence
What does Congress know?
Once independent agencies disappear, it’ll be a short walk for Trump to disappear the Court. After all, the president’s agencies cannot be wrong, and, even if they are, the president is immune from any responsibility, and agencies cannot be held liable for following orders.
So, who needs courts?
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"…That’s … the Roberts court — it just makes shit up.”
This will likely be the epitath assigned to this court by history.
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It looks like the next four years are going to demonstrate to us how much of our government is based on court decisions and the decency of politicians of all parties who followed those decisions. It would have been much better if the decisions had been turned into laws, we’re learning that it’s far too easy for a rogue Supreme Court to undo the norms based in court decisions. Maybe that’s a lesson for afterwards when we are trying to rebuild the government to a functional state.
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More great reporting.
A long time ago, I was fascinated by the texture & structure of legal argumentation.
Now, what subtlety & care in reasoning are required? The Roberts Court, yes, just makes shit up. There is no textual, historical, or foundational ground of any kind to accept any of Roberts’s reasoning on “presidential immunity.” The decision rests on literally nothing. Takes a lot of pages to lay out its reasons, makes mannered and pompous statements about presidential powers, and does for American law & government what a large draft of wood alcohol, CTE, or an invading worm does for the brain.
What’s to come for the body, that is run by that brain? How’s American life & business going to fare? Political stability?
Has this Court, blowing through the 14th Amendment on one case, having blown up the structure of the Constitution by upending the separation of powers in another (“presidential immunity”), just set the fuse for the material & political undoing of the republic?
Did they notice what oaths they swore when they assumed office?
It doesn’t ultimately matter if they care. They have fouled up. We are headed for 52 Pickup, unless we are lucky.
Think of the bright minds, and the elaborate education, that have put through this madness.
It worries me about the foundation of everything.
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I don’t disagree with this but parts bother me. There are many things I ‘thought’ when I was young and first working but as I aged and took in more information I changed. To think these Justices never changed their ‘beliefs’ in 40 years is sad or unbelievable and there is more at play here.
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Good God. He installed a palateable douchebag at the Fed Reserve in his last term.
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SCOTUS first established presidential immunity as a constitutional thing in 1982. So it rested on something, even though the exact parameters are bullshit.
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Yep…for gentlemen’s agreements to work…first you need gentlemen…or women…or people. Ever since dump first arose, I have been appalled at how many actions we took for granted would NOT be followed. Presidents reveal their tax info…etc.
All of it is bullshit unless we make it into law.
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How did they justify it or describe it in 1982?
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No, the only safe course is to get fucking furious, so you’re on the offensive and they’re on the defensive. Have you maybe seen how REPUBLICANS are doing it?
What you just described is a teenager in a slasher movie hiding in a room waiting for the footsteps to get softer, only when she thinks the killer is gone, she steps outside and gets her head lopped off.
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I think of CJ John Roberts as the quintessential “silver tongued devil”, articulate, personable and lethal.
Inside John Roberts’ Decades-Long Crusade Against the Voting Rights Act
Jeremy B. White05/08/20
“John Glover Roberts, a 25-year-old graduate of Harvard Law School, arrived in Washington in early 1980. Harvard Law professor Morton Horwitz described Roberts as “a conservative looking for a conservative ideology in American history,” and he found that ideology in the nation’s capital, first as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist and then as an influential aide in Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department.
At the time, Rehnquist and the Reagan administration were at the vanguard of a new conservative counterrevolution in the law—a legal backlash against the historic and liberal-leaning civil rights laws of the 1960s. Just months before Roberts came to Washington, the Supreme Court had significantly limited the scope of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965. As a young lawyer, Roberts eagerly took up the conservative cause, becoming a key foot soldier in the effort to preserve that decision and weaken the VRA.”
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/john-roberts-voting-rights-act-121222/
But that’s not all, another of Roberts’ crusades is the Voting Rights Act, which he and his band of carpetbaggers have been hollowing out as fast as they dared. But now with Trump, there are no limits to what the politically partisan right will reach for, their partisan grasp for what may be obtainable extended, beyond the wildest dreams of political avarice… And Roberts & Co are enabling a selected bounty of right wing fantasy positions to be realized. Don’t like abortion? Overthrow Roe v Wade.
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Yeah, I use hyperbole + personal opinion. It’s still 119 pages or something on that order of crap that supplants the Constitution like an inkwell spilled.
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Immunity from civil liability for official acts undertaken while in office.
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With all due respect, I said absolutely nothing about taking action or not taking action, and certainly said nothing about hiding and waiting. “What I just described” is what is “safe” to expect of the conservative SCOTUS. What informs reaction to the subsequent reality is another matter.
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