In oral arguments this week for Trump v. Slaughter, the high-impact Supreme Court case argued over the right of the president to fire the Federal Trade Commissioner, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the quiet part out loud. From an early skirmish with hacksaw-voiced Solicitor General John Sauer:
BROWN JACKSON: You seem to think that that there’s something about the president that requires him to control everything as a matter of democratic accountability, when on the other side we have Congress saying we’d like these particular agencies and officers to be independent of presidential control for the good of the people. We’re exercising our Article one authority to protect the people by creating this independent structure. And I don’t understand why it is that the thought that the president gets to control everything can outweigh Congress’s clear authority and duty to protect the people in this way.
SAUER: Congress has a broad authority in structuring the federal government. What it lacks authority to do is to create these headless agencies, agencies who have no boss and are not answerable to the voters.
BROWN JACKSON: Why? Why does it lack – the Constitution does not say that Congress cannot create an independent agency.
In oral arguments this week for Trump v. Slaughter, the high-impact Supreme Court case argued over the right of the president to fire the Federal Trade Commissioner, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the quiet part out loud. From an early skirmish with hacksaw-voiced Solicitor General John Sauer:
BROWN JACKSON: You seem to think that that there’s something about the president that requires him to control everything as a matter of democratic accountability, when on the other side we have Congress saying we’d like these particular agencies and officers to be independent of presidential control for the good of the people. We’re exercising our Article one authority to protect the people by creating this independent structure. And I don’t understand why it is that the thought that the president gets to control everything can outweigh Congress’s clear authority and duty to protect the people in this way.
SAUER: Congress has a broad authority in structuring the federal government. What it lacks authority to do is to create these headless agencies, agencies who have no boss and are not answerable to the voters.
BROWN JACKSON: Why? Why does it lack – the Constitution does not say that Congress cannot create an independent agency.
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