Supreme Court Poised to Restore Presidential Authority Over Executive Branch in FTC Case

The Supreme Court appears ready to do something it should have done decades ago: acknowledge that the Constitution means what it says about presidential authority over the executive branch.

During oral arguments Monday in Trump v. Slaughter, a clear majority of justices demonstrated receptiveness to the Trump administration’s position that the president possesses the constitutional authority to remove Rebecca Slaughter, a Democrat member of the Federal Trade Commission. This case represents far more than a simple personnel dispute. It strikes at the heart of a fundamental constitutional question: Who controls the executive branch?

The answer, according to the Constitution’s text and structure, is unambiguous. Article II vests executive power in the president, not in unelected bureaucrats insulated from accountability. Yet for nearly a century, the Supreme Court’s 1935 decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States has permitted Congress to shield certain agency officials from presidential removal, creating a shadow government of “independent agencies” that operate beyond the reach of the people’s elected chief executive.

U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer presented the unitary executive theory with clarity and constitutional rigor. This doctrine, grounded in the Constitution’s actual text, holds that the president maintains complete authority over executive branch functions. Sauer correctly argued that Humphrey’s violates this foundational principle and must be overturned.

“Humphrey’s has become a decaying husk with bold and particularly dangerous pretensions,” Sauer stated, invoking Justice Clarence Thomas’s warning that the precedent “poses a direct threat to our constitutional structure and, as a result, the liberty of the American people.” The expansion of the federal bureaucracy makes this threat more acute, not less. When unelected officials wield enormous power without accountability to the president, they wield power without accountability to the voters who elect that president.

The court’s Republican-appointed justices appeared generally receptive to these arguments, recognizing the constitutional logic at play. The Democrat-appointed justices, predictably, raised objections rooted in concerns about concentrated presidential power.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan expressed anxiety about presidential authority over bureaucratic rulemaking and other functions Congress has delegated to executive agencies. But here is the fundamental flaw in their reasoning: Congress cannot delegate away the president’s constitutional authority by creating supposedly “independent” agencies. The Constitution does not permit Congress to establish a fourth branch of government immune from presidential oversight.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made perhaps the most revealing argument, defending the role of unelected “experts” in handling complex policy matters and suggesting that concentrated power in one person undermines the “best interest of the American people.” This argument, while superficially appealing, contradicts basic constitutional design. The Founders understood that accountability requires a clear chain of command. When bureaucrats operate beyond presidential control, they operate beyond democratic accountability entirely.

Slaughter’s attorney, Amit Agarwal, argued that Trump’s firing violated the law because multi-member commissions have enjoyed removal protections since the founding era. This claim distorts history. The Constitution’s text provides the president with removal authority as part of executive power. Any statutory limitation on that authority contradicts the Constitution’s structure.

The real question is not whether the president has too much power, but whether the American people have enough control over their government. When unelected bureaucrats make consequential decisions affecting millions of Americans while shielded from presidential oversight, democracy suffers. The president remains the only executive branch official accountable to all Americans through the electoral process.

If the Supreme Court overturns Humphrey’s Executor, it will not be creating new presidential powers. It will be restoring the constitutional structure the Founders established and that nearly a century of misguided precedent has eroded. The Constitution is clear. The president runs the executive branch. It is time the Court recognized this fundamental truth.