On Monday, December 8, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter, which deals with the legality of President Donald Trump's firing of Rebecca Slaughter — a former commissioner for the Federal Trade Commission (FCC).
According to legal experts, the case has major implications for the United States' system of checks and balances. One of those experts is Kate Shaw, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
In an op-ed published by the New York Times on December 8, Shaw stresses that Trump v. Slaughter "will decide whether to grant the president, for the first time in American history, the power to fire the heads of virtually all independent agencies at will."
"This would be a vast transfer of power from Congress to the president," Shaw warns. "The Constitution doesn't explicitly grant the president any such power, and nearly a century ago, the (U.S. Supreme) Court unanimously rejected an argument that the president possessed it. Today's Republican-appointed justices appear to be firmly under the sway of an atextual and ahistoric theory — the Unitary Executive Theory — that demands complete presidential control over essentially every government agency and insists that the power to fire agency heads at will is an indispensable part of such control."
Shaw notes that over the years, Congress has given some federal agencies "a degree of independence from the president."
"Giving a president complete control would have a profound impact on how our government functions and the ability of these agencies to do work that touches the lives of practically every American," the Penn law professor explains. "It could undermine, in tangible and immediate ways, agencies' ability to safeguard consumers' privacy, ensure the rights of workers and unions, minimize the hazards posed by ordinary household products and more. In his brief in Slaughter, President Trump insists that the Constitution grants him, as part of his core powers, the ability to remove agency leaders at will."
Shaw adds, "In this case, he is trying to remove Rebecca Slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission…. Despite Mr. Trump's claims, presidential power is not so fragile that a few Democratic appointees at an agency like the FTC pose a mortal threat to it."
Kate Shaw's full op-ed for the New York Times is available at this link (subscription required).
