We are sitting in an uncanny valley regarding law.

Once independent agencies are no longer independent, partly due to the expansion of the unitary executive viewpoint in both the Supreme Court and the current executive branch, and the rather obsequious Congress we have that instead of being “jealous to protect its power” is kowtowing to anything the Trump administration wants.

The supreme courts ruling on presidential immunity, chevron deference, and the dismantling of the ideas of an independent agency have all come together to create a dangerous situation for all of us.

The Supreme Court, whether because the of their own alignment with partisanship or some other more nefarious reason, have gutted the idea of an independent agency (except for the Federal Reserve, which is special, but not for any legal reason, but rather because even conservative SCOTUS is not willing to risk the fallout of logically applying their unitary executive view of government to the Fed).

So Congress put a lot of regulatory power in these once independent and non-partisan agencies, and that’s gone. Combine that with a president that is overtly partisan and vindictive, and you have a problem where SCOTUS has created a situation that has elevated the whims of a president above the law Congress created.

We will be feeling the affects of this decision for generations, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the catalyst for the failure of the American form of government.

Our system cannot sustain when coequal branches of government kowtow to politics.

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estearum 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm just excited for the next POTUS to use SEAL Team 6 to quell his political opposition as "an official act" and then I'm sure SCOTUS and Congress start reevaluating some things.

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Terr_ 7 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Right after that ruling, I really wanted the Biden administration to construct some "official act" that would, say, cut-off power or water to the justices' houses.

Not that it would work if the justices aren't really reasoning in good faith.

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mcherm an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I genuinely believe that once the current administration is out of office the new President should strongly campaign in favor of the strongest possible changes to prevent dictatorship: constitutional amendments to reverse some of the most egregious harm done by the Supreme Court and the general inaction in response to fascism. Then if the opposition party isn't supportive, the new President should set a date after which they threaten to abuse their powers in exactly the same ways Trump has abused his. Surely that would motivate the opposition party, right?

	▲	estearum an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		IMO just start with SEAL Team 6's "official actions" and then you can start proposing changes. That way you just need to motivate the people who didn't already attempt a coup.
	▲	Amezarak an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Very little of what has happened is novel.

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Amezarak an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Where did the constitutional idea of an independent agency come from and what was its justification? I’ve heard a lot about the “unitary executive” but I never see what the counter argument is except for “it would be good to have independent agencies because sometimes democratic input produces bad outcomes and experts do better.” Which yeah, makes sense, nobody argues that democracies make sane decisions - but it’s always an outcome-based argument instead of a legal one.

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wahern 40 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The debate began with the First Congress, but largely petered out in the early 1800s and didn't really pick up again until the rise of the regulatory state in the early 1900s.

There are newer law review articles but none quite so comprehensive and earnest as Cass R. Sunstein & Lawrence Lessig, "The President and the Administration," 94 Columbia Law Review 1 (1994), https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/journal_articles/7779/

That's the same Lawrence Lessig who fought (and lost) copyright extension. 1994 is long before tribal politics became as pervasive and extreme in academia as it is today (not that it didn't exist back then). The paper pulls its punches and assumes unitary executive proponents are arguing in good faith, rather than rationalizing a foregone conclusion.

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Arodex 27 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The Supreme Court already gave you an answer by pussyfooting around the FED's independence, despite their own legal reasoning that independent agencies can't exist.

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goatlover an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It came from Congress creating those agencies as is their right to do so, and they were created with the idea of not being weaponize for partisan purposes. We really don't want the DOJ to be the personal enforcement of the president's whims against his political enemies.

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Amezarak an hour ago | parent [-]

It seems controversial that Congress could create independent executive agencies. Could they make the entire executive independent except for the military? Why or why not?

And while I agree we don’t want the DoJ treated that way, that’s how it’s been operated since its beginnings! If anything the past few decades have been relatively not so bad. And regardless of what I want that doesn’t answer whether it would be within Congresses power to make it independent of the President.

	▲	jibalt 30 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> It seems controversial that Congress could create independent executive agencies. To whom? The U.S. Constitution says that Congress has the power "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof." That's rather clear. The legislative branch makes those laws and the executive branch executes them. Beyond that its role is limited ... commander-in-chief of the military, pardon power, making treaties (with approval of the legislature), appointing ambassadors, judges, and other officers (with approval of the legislature). The legislature creates (or removes) the departments and sets forth their duties. The role of the executive is to see to it that the departments carry out those duties as established by the legislature.
	▲	goatlover 11 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The Congress, representing the will of the people as the re, has the most power of three branches. The president is technically elected by the states via the Electoral College unlike Congressional representatives. The president is supposed to answer to Congress. The purpose was not to have an exectuive wielding the power of a king or a tyrant, which the US founding fathers were worried about.

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someonebaggy 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

	▲	estearum an hour ago \| parent [-]
		If Congresspeople can be pushed out of the party or out of the party's favor (and therefore office) by POTUS, then they de facto do not have power. The best distillation of our current conundrum I've heard is that our framers architected a system where the branches of government would compete (i.e. protect their power) against each other. Today, we have people in each branch willing to forego their own branch's power in exchange for greater party power.