John Roberts fought for decades to get rid of the 1935 precedent that had limited a president’s firing authority
For more than 40 years, since his service as a young Reagan administration lawyer, Chief Justice John Roberts has pressed for an exceptionally powerful US president, one who could fire the heads of...
This is a bad ruling.
Heard it described as independent watchdogs
Are now lap dogs.
But the work of US independent agencies cuts a swath across American life, for better or worse, imposing requirements on businesses and individuals in areas of public health and safety, consumer protection, with the goal of enhancing the common good.
On Monday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered an oral dissent for the left-wing justices, emphasizing the importance of insulating independent regulators from the pressure of a president who may want to infringe on fair-trade regulations, such as overseen by the FTC, but also workplace safety, nuclear energy and chemical hazards that regulatory agencies manage.
Sotomayor said Congress had long relied on the 1935 precedent to set up a workable regulatory system of government.
“(T)he Court gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted,” Sotomayor wrote, “elevating him above his once-coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws.”
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