The Supreme Court Weighs Presidential Power

The US Supreme Court is poised to engage in a thought-provoking debate regarding the president’s authority to fire agency officials, a discussion that will put the conservative justices’ commitment to originalism to the test. At the heart of this matter lies the case of Slaughter, which revolves around the question of whether Congress can impose limitations on the president’s power to remove agency officials.

Notably, the Constitution grants the president the authority to make appointments, but it ___ silent on the issue of removal. This silence has led to a contentious dispute, with the conservative justices relying heavily on historical evidence to support their stance. However, as Craig Green, a Temple University law professor and historian, astutely observed, “What do you do when the Supreme Court says its decisions are supported by history, but history doesn’t support the Supreme Court?” The conservative justices’ adherence to originalism, an approach that seeks to interpret the Constitution as it would have been understood at the time of its adoption, has elevated the significance of history in Supreme Court deliberations.

According to Laura Edwards, a history professor at Princeton University, this methodology allows the court’s conservatives to “hide their power as decision-makers,” framing their decisions as a reflection of historical precedent rather than ideological choices that shape the ← →