Within in the MAGA movement, a far-right legal doctrine known as the Unitary Executive Theory has become increasingly prominent. The theory claims that U.S. presidents have sole authority over the federal government's executive branch, and its critics argue that it ignores the checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution.

One of those critics is Simon Lazarus, who was a domestic policy adviser for President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s but has spent most of his career working for Washington, D.C. law firms.

In an article published by The New Republic on January 2, Lazarus is highly critical of the Unitary Executive Theory and the U.S. Supreme Court — which, he argues, is helping to advance an idea that has no "grounding" in the U.S. Constitution.

The High Court recently heard oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter, President Donald Trump's legal battle with former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) official Rebecca Slaughter (who he fired). Trump and his lawyers believe that under the Unitary Executive Theory, the president had a right to fire Slaughter. But Slaughter's allies are countering that the executive branch, under the Constitution, doesn't have nearly as much power as he says it does.

"The right-wing justices' emergent disarray seemed to reflect their awareness of pitfalls lurking in and around their hitherto unquestioned unitary executive gospel — including logical, legal, and most of all, real-world consequences that menace the economy, the nation, and the Court itself," Lazarus argues. "With these threats suddenly hoving into view, the conservative justices were flailing to figure out credible strategies to head it off. Obviously, the gritted-teeth dogmatism of the conservative justices is the engine that has driven this kooky theory forward, despite its evident lack of grounding in constitutional text and history."

Lazarus adds, "But liberals also deserve blame. They have stood by while conservative presidential absolutists have framed the debate with labels, shibboleths, and catch-phrases that, while misleading or outright false, have tilted the playing field rightward."

Liberals, the former Carter Administration official says, need to do a much better job exposing the constitutional flaws in the Unitary Executive Theory.

"Liberal leaders cannot save invaluable institutional structures their predecessors built, if they fail to galvanize an irresistible fervor for their preservation, as those predecessors did," Lazarus writes. "And with the flaws of unitary executive theory being so apparent to its proponents on the Roberts Court, it would be foolish to not pillory this dogma, now that its edifice is buckling."

Read Simon Lazarus' full article for The New Republic at this link.


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