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Executive Power

S. Ct. Agrees to Hear Merits Case on Whether President Has Power to Remove "Independent" Agency Heads (the Humphrey's Executor Overruling Question)

|The Volokh Conspiracy |


From today's order in Trump v. Slaughter:

The application is also treated as a petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment, and the petition is granted. The parties are directed to brief and argue the following questions: (1) Whether the statutory removal protections for members of the Federal Trade Commission violate the separation of powers and, if so, whether Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935), should be overruled. (2) Whether a federal court may prevent a person's removal from public office, either through relief at equity or at law.

Justice Kagan, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, dissented from the Court's staying the lower court decision, which had temporarily ordered FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter reinstated.

Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. Naturally, his posts here (like the opinions of the other bloggers) are his own, and not endorsed by any institution.