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That's always the question with this unitary executive business. They believe this is the government defined by the Constitution, regardless of precedent. Do th

by DFHippie 10mo ago

That's always the question with this unitary executive business. They believe this is the government defined by the Constitution, regardless of precedent. Do they believe it is a good system of government? Do they believe this is the government intended or rather the government allowed by legal loophole, vagueness, or contradiction? Because it seems like they think the president should rule like a monarch because they happen to control the presidency at the current moment, not because it is a wise and effective system of government.

CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
The concept of independent agencies (that is, those overseen by Congress rather than the president) was controversial long before, and for far longer, than it wasn't.
- hexator 10mo ago
  Yes but let's not pretend this isn't a new interpretation.
  - CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
    It's not, really. In Seila Law v. CFPB (2020) the Supreme Court ruled that even directors seemingly protected by for-cause language (which the FCC charter does not have) can be removed at will unless the agency in question "exercises no part of the executive power" and is "an administrative body ... that performs ... specified duties as a legislative or as a judicial aid." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seila_Law_LLC_v._Consumer_Financial_Protection_Bureau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seila_Law_LLC_v._Consumer_Fina...
    - hexator 10mo ago
      > 2020
    - SpicyLemonZest 10mo ago
      Do you have a case which was not about the executive authority of Donald Trump specifically? When we talk about how controversial or how new this interpretation is, the question I really have in mind is, why should I believe that it was developed out of genuine legal analysis and not an unprincipled desire to give Trump more power?
      - CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
        Yeah the FCC is really about Weiner[1], if anything, not Humphrey's. Weiner established some precedent of "inferred" independence for agencies of a certain character (e.g. those whose function is wholly judicial or legislative) even when explicit removal protections are not included in the law. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiener_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiener_v._United_States
      - rayiner 10mo ago
        Myers v. United States, written by Justice Taft in 1926: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/272/52/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/272/52/ It contains an exhaustive historical analysis explaining why the President has unrestricted power to remove executive officers. The “unprincipled” decisions were the ones like Humphrey’s Executor that sought to find ways to implement the 20th century concept of an “expert administrative state.” That’s not the government that was created in our constitution.
    - TSiege 10mo ago
      In 2020, five years ago, was essentially the exact same court as today, except KBJ replaced Breyer. The precedence in question dates to 1935 Humphrey's Executor v. United States where a conservative Supreme Court sought to cut back executive power of a liberal president. Now we have a conservative Supreme Court expanding executive power for a conservative president. If you think the Roberts court would have let Joe Biden have this much power well then I have a bridge and some student loans to sell you
      - CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
        Humphrey's, which held that for-cause protections are constitutional for agencies that meet certain tests, while broadly relevant to current events (FTC etc.), is not relevant to FCC as FCC charter does not have explicit for-cause protections.
      - delichon 10mo ago
        > If you think the Roberts court would have let Joe Biden have this much power well then I have a bridge and some student loans to sell you Yes, I do think the time horizon of every SCOTUS member is longer than four years. I believe Gorsuch when he says: I appreciate that, but you also appreciate that we're writing a rule for the ages. -- https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2023/23-939_3fb4.pdf I think that they all have the hubris to see themselves as part of history and write their opinions for future generations. Not that they aren't biased by current events, but that they see themselves as larger than that.
        miltonlost 10mo ago
        I bet you also think Originalists are consistent in their applitcaiton of their methodology. lmao
        Forgeties79 10mo ago
        > I think that they all have the hubris to see themselves as part of history and write their opinions for future generations. Which some of them see as an opportunity
  - rayiner 10mo ago
    It isn’t a new interpretation. More or less this same interpretation was articulated by Justice Taft in Myers v. United States in 1926: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers_v._United_States.
ike2792 10mo ago
It's a fair question to ask "who are independent executive agency heads accountable to" in a constitutional context. It is true that the Executive Branch has grown far beyond what the Founding Fathers could have imagined, but the idea of a unitary executive is that the President is responsible and accountable for everything that happens in the Executive Branch. If the voters don't like what the Executive Branch is doing, they can replace the President in the next election. What happens if voters don't like what independent executive agencies are doing? There's no democratic recourse. Think of a scenario where a President was elected with a large-ish majority and promised during the campaign to change broadband regulations to reduce broadband prices across the country. Unfortunately, the FCC commissioners were all appointed by the previous president and block this policy change that the voters clearly support. How does that square with democratic accountability?
- techblueberry 10mo ago
  The president should be the weakest branch of government. If laws need to change, congress should do it. That is democratic accountability.
  - ike2792 10mo ago
    The problem is that Congress has delegated a lot of its traditional law making power to the Executive Branch. Laws are written in vague ways with executive agencies given liberty to implement as they see fit. This gives a lot of additional power to the President (who can at least be dealt with by impeachment or being voted out in the next election) as well as independent executive agency heads (who can't be directly fired by anybody). I agree that Congress should be the ones passing laws as the excessive delegation of lawmaking by Congress is what's gotten us into the current situation
    - adgjlsfhk1 10mo ago
      none of the authority Congress has delegated has been delegated irrevocably. if you want to change how the head of the FCC is appointed there's this thing called a law that can't be passed to change it
rayiner 10mo ago
How can you cite “precedent” when Myers v. United States decided this issue in favor of the unitary executive back in 1926? The administrative state that exists today was only facilitated by the FDR Supreme Court overruling a bunch of precedents. Go read the Federalist Papers. The founders thought very hard about who should exercise which powers and how they should be selected. They did not intend for 99% of the actual government operations to be run by “independent” executive officials that were insulated from elections. That’s something we made up in the 20th century in response to trendy ideas about “scientific government.”
- zimpenfish 10mo ago
  > The founders thought very hard about who should exercise which powers and how they should be selected. Which would be perfectly fine as a basis if we were still in the 18th century. Things are, I believe, somewhat different now and what a bunch of rich old white men thought then isn't all that relevant now except as a historical oddity.
  - rayiner 10mo ago
    If you think what the founders said doesn’t matter because they’re dead white guys, isn’t that an argument for giving more power to the guy who won the election? Because surely the dead hand of the founders is the only thing that has the authority to overrule the elected President. It has to be a dichotomy, right? You either go by what the constitution meant to those who wrote it, because that’s how written agreements work, or otherwise you go with what the mob wants. How can there be some third option?
    - archagon 10mo ago
      No, why would it have to be a dichotomy? That doesn't make any sense. For example, the Catholic Church is neither (solely) defined by a set of 2,000 year old writings, nor is it under strict authoritarian rule by the elected Pope. The Church has been gradually sculpted and steered by centuries of councils, disagreements and reconciliations, power struggles, competing institutions, and much more. It is its own thing, defined by precedent and history and nearly unrecognizable when compared across centuries.

CGMthrowaway 10mo ago

The concept of independent agencies (that is, those overseen by Congress rather than the president) was controversial long before, and for far longer, than it wasn't.

hexator 10mo ago
Yes but let's not pretend this isn't a new interpretation.
- CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
  It's not, really. In Seila Law v. CFPB (2020) the Supreme Court ruled that even directors seemingly protected by for-cause language (which the FCC charter does not have) can be removed at will unless the agency in question "exercises no part of the executive power" and is "an administrative body ... that performs ... specified duties as a legislative or as a judicial aid." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seila_Law_LLC_v._Consumer_Financial_Protection_Bureau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seila_Law_LLC_v._Consumer_Fina...
  - hexator 10mo ago
    > 2020
  - SpicyLemonZest 10mo ago
    Do you have a case which was not about the executive authority of Donald Trump specifically? When we talk about how controversial or how new this interpretation is, the question I really have in mind is, why should I believe that it was developed out of genuine legal analysis and not an unprincipled desire to give Trump more power?
    - CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
      Yeah the FCC is really about Weiner[1], if anything, not Humphrey's. Weiner established some precedent of "inferred" independence for agencies of a certain character (e.g. those whose function is wholly judicial or legislative) even when explicit removal protections are not included in the law. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiener_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiener_v._United_States
    - rayiner 10mo ago
      Myers v. United States, written by Justice Taft in 1926: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/272/52/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/272/52/ It contains an exhaustive historical analysis explaining why the President has unrestricted power to remove executive officers. The “unprincipled” decisions were the ones like Humphrey’s Executor that sought to find ways to implement the 20th century concept of an “expert administrative state.” That’s not the government that was created in our constitution.
  - TSiege 10mo ago
    In 2020, five years ago, was essentially the exact same court as today, except KBJ replaced Breyer. The precedence in question dates to 1935 Humphrey's Executor v. United States where a conservative Supreme Court sought to cut back executive power of a liberal president. Now we have a conservative Supreme Court expanding executive power for a conservative president. If you think the Roberts court would have let Joe Biden have this much power well then I have a bridge and some student loans to sell you
    - CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
      Humphrey's, which held that for-cause protections are constitutional for agencies that meet certain tests, while broadly relevant to current events (FTC etc.), is not relevant to FCC as FCC charter does not have explicit for-cause protections.
    - delichon 10mo ago
      > If you think the Roberts court would have let Joe Biden have this much power well then I have a bridge and some student loans to sell you Yes, I do think the time horizon of every SCOTUS member is longer than four years. I believe Gorsuch when he says: I appreciate that, but you also appreciate that we're writing a rule for the ages. -- https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2023/23-939_3fb4.pdf I think that they all have the hubris to see themselves as part of history and write their opinions for future generations. Not that they aren't biased by current events, but that they see themselves as larger than that.
      - miltonlost 10mo ago
        I bet you also think Originalists are consistent in their applitcaiton of their methodology. lmao
      - Forgeties79 10mo ago
        > I think that they all have the hubris to see themselves as part of history and write their opinions for future generations. Which some of them see as an opportunity
- rayiner 10mo ago
  It isn’t a new interpretation. More or less this same interpretation was articulated by Justice Taft in Myers v. United States in 1926: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers_v._United_States.

ike2792 10mo ago

It's a fair question to ask "who are independent executive agency heads accountable to" in a constitutional context. It is true that the Executive Branch has grown far beyond what the Founding Fathers could have imagined, but the idea of a unitary executive is that the President is responsible and accountable for everything that happens in the Executive Branch. If the voters don't like what the Executive Branch is doing, they can replace the President in the next election. What happens if voters don't like what independent executive agencies are doing? There's no democratic recourse. Think of a scenario where a President was elected with a large-ish majority and promised during the campaign to change broadband regulations to reduce broadband prices across the country. Unfortunately, the FCC commissioners were all appointed by the previous president and block this policy change that the voters clearly support. How does that square with democratic accountability?

techblueberry 10mo ago
The president should be the weakest branch of government. If laws need to change, congress should do it. That is democratic accountability.
- ike2792 10mo ago
  The problem is that Congress has delegated a lot of its traditional law making power to the Executive Branch. Laws are written in vague ways with executive agencies given liberty to implement as they see fit. This gives a lot of additional power to the President (who can at least be dealt with by impeachment or being voted out in the next election) as well as independent executive agency heads (who can't be directly fired by anybody). I agree that Congress should be the ones passing laws as the excessive delegation of lawmaking by Congress is what's gotten us into the current situation
  - adgjlsfhk1 10mo ago
    none of the authority Congress has delegated has been delegated irrevocably. if you want to change how the head of the FCC is appointed there's this thing called a law that can't be passed to change it

rayiner 10mo ago

How can you cite “precedent” when Myers v. United States decided this issue in favor of the unitary executive back in 1926? The administrative state that exists today was only facilitated by the FDR Supreme Court overruling a bunch of precedents. Go read the Federalist Papers. The founders thought very hard about who should exercise which powers and how they should be selected. They did not intend for 99% of the actual government operations to be run by “independent” executive officials that were insulated from elections. That’s something we made up in the 20th century in response to trendy ideas about “scientific government.”

zimpenfish 10mo ago
> The founders thought very hard about who should exercise which powers and how they should be selected. Which would be perfectly fine as a basis if we were still in the 18th century. Things are, I believe, somewhat different now and what a bunch of rich old white men thought then isn't all that relevant now except as a historical oddity.
- rayiner 10mo ago
  If you think what the founders said doesn’t matter because they’re dead white guys, isn’t that an argument for giving more power to the guy who won the election? Because surely the dead hand of the founders is the only thing that has the authority to overrule the elected President. It has to be a dichotomy, right? You either go by what the constitution meant to those who wrote it, because that’s how written agreements work, or otherwise you go with what the mob wants. How can there be some third option?
  - archagon 10mo ago
    No, why would it have to be a dichotomy? That doesn't make any sense. For example, the Catholic Church is neither (solely) defined by a set of 2,000 year old writings, nor is it under strict authoritarian rule by the elected Pope. The Church has been gradually sculpted and steered by centuries of councils, disagreements and reconciliations, power struggles, competing institutions, and much more. It is its own thing, defined by precedent and history and nearly unrecognizable when compared across centuries.