The Supreme Court’s position seems to be driven by an idea — called the unitary executive theory — that has become popular with the current conservative Supreme Court majority. The first and most important case in which the Court adopted this idea was Seila Law, where the Court majority, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, signed on to this statement about the drafting of the Constitution:
The Framers made the President the most democratic and politically accountable official in Government. Only the President (along with the Vice President) is elected by the entire Nation. And the President’s political accountability is enhanced by the solitary nature of the Executive Branch, which provides a “single object for the jealousy and watchfulness of the people.”
This description of what occurred at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 is wrong and — as brief as it is — was essential to the idea that the president was made a powerful and all-important figure in the government at the time the Constitution was drafted. I am sorry to have to say this. Like all lawyers, I have immense respect for the Court as an institution and have always believed that what I have read in its opinions was well-researched fact. But this is not.
There was no thought at the Constitutional Convention that the president might be “the most democratic and politically accountable official in Government.” The debate over the nature of the presidency took place throughout the entire three-and-a-half months of the Convention, largely because most of the delegates — recalling the problems they’d had with King George only a few years before — feared giving power to a single person.
For the whole Convention, the debate was whether to have a single person as the president, or a group, or — if a single person — someone elected by Congress. There was no consideration — none — about the president ultimately being “democratic” or “politically accountable.” That was exactly what the delegates most feared. The Convention had already allotted to Congress most of the power they were willing to give to anyone, and they limited it to a list of specific powers in the Constitution’s Article I. The notion that these same delegates would — in Article II — give unlimited “democratic” or “politically accountable” power to a single person like a president is completely fanciful.
Although it was agreed that a president was necessary to see that laws were executed and enforced, most of the delegates appeared to fear a single person elected by the people, whatever his powers. They were concerned about an “elected monarch,” as they should have been at that time and place. This would have been clear if anyone at the Supreme Court had bothered to look at the debate in the Constitutional Convention.
Although the final decision, made in the last weeks of the Convention, was to have a single person as president, he was to be elected by an “electoral college” — a different organization than what we have today, but a compromise necessary to get the votes of the members of the Convention who feared a president elected directly by the people; their concern was that, with popular backing, he could become a dictator or elected monarch.
The original Electoral College enacted by the Convention did not have any relationship to the popular vote, as it does now. The electors were well-known people in each state, who would send two names to the central government. The person with the most votes would become president and the runner up vice president. This system was changed in 1804 to require the Electoral College to follow the popular vote in each state, but still we have had 19 cases (including 2016 and 2024) where the president was elected by the Electoral College, but without a majority of the national popular vote.
George Will is understandably dismayed by Trump’s megalomania. Three slices:
It is incongruous that Donald Trump, who advertises his disdain for things European, wants to give us something that no one in his or her right mind wants: a knockoff of France’s Arc de Triomphe.
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Given Trump’s gargantuan exercises of executive discretion regarding great matters of state, it might seem quaint to wonder why he cannot be stopped from treating Washington as his chew toy. This would be unworthy of our nation if he had exquisite taste. The fact that he revels in being a vulgarian takes a toll on the nation’s soul.
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Trump has the terrible strength peculiar to people who are incapable of embarrassment, and cannot fathom that they look ridiculous. Recently, however, Republicans in the House of Representatives, hitherto impeccably obedient to him, seem to have become healthily embarrassed about their subservience. There have been silent insurrections.
The New York Sun reads Congress’s spending bills so that the rest of us do not need to. It reports that the annual spending bill funding the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts refers to this venue by that name. If you can hardly believe this impertinence, check the bill’s page 371.
Trump last night revealed that he shares Kamala Harris’s affection for price controls by calling for a one-year cap on credit-card interest rates. [DBx: But, hey, not to worry; this endorsement of price controls comes from the leader of the MAGA right rather than from anyone on the progressive left, which must mean that these controls will work as promised.]
The Supreme Court’s forthcoming decision in the Learning Resources Inc. et al. v. Trump case could significantly reduce the complexity of the US tariff system if the Court invalidates the Trump administration’s IEEPA tariffs. Such reprieve, however, would likely be temporary because the Trump administration has pledged to replicate the IEEPA regime through other executive tariff authorities, including through both Sections 232 and 301 measures, and previously unused statutes such as Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1934 and Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930. (Though, such authorities arguably have more built-in procedural and/or substantive checks than IEEPA does.) This system, in fact, might be even more complex than what we have right now.
It will therefore remain the case that a true reduction in tariff red tape will only be accomplished through congressional action to revise various US trade laws and reclaim the legislative branch’s constitutional authority over tariffs.
He made the perilous trip via Hong Kong, Ecuador and by boat from the Bahamas to Florida. Before setting sail he scheduled the release of his evidence of Chinese prisons and camps holding the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement encountered Mr. Guan by chance last August and arrested him for illegal entry. He has languished since in a New York jail.
DHS last month dropped its efforts to send him to Uganda while his U.S. asylum case was pending. But a DHS spokesperson and DHS lawyer Niles Gerry declined to say Thursday whether they plan to support Mr. Guan’s asylum claim. The concern is that DHS will oppose Mr. Guan’s claim in a bloody-minded attempt to punish his illegal entry.
Jonathan Hartley writes about Adam Smith’s Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Here’s his conclusion:
Two hundred and fifty years after The Wealth of Nations, and two hundred and fifty years into the American experiment, the core insight still holds. Prosperity is not planned into existence. It emerges from systems that let individuals focus on what they do best, coordinate through markets, and operate within a framework of law, property rights, and limited public investment. This, in turn, helps lift many out of poverty.
Smith ultimately offered a blueprint for growth grounded in realism about human knowledge and incentives. America’s most significant economic successes came when it followed that blueprint, even imperfectly. Remembering The Wealth of Nations at 250 is not about reverence for an old book. It is about understanding why a decentralized, specialized, and institutionally grounded economy has served America so well, and why abandoning those principles would be a costly mistake.
Here’s wisdom from John Stossel. Two slices:
America’s going broke, but we lavish money on people my age, many of whom don’t need it. Our deficit spending will cause horrible pain, and yet young people elect socialists who promise more spending. They clap when Zohran Mamdani, my new mayor, says he’ll replace “rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”
They naively think that this time, socialism will bring prosperity and kindness. They don’t understand that the opposite is true. Government stifles innovation and reduces our choices. The only thing that creates prosperity is capitalism.
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Much of what we libertarians believe comes down to Henry David Thoreau’s line: “That government is best which governs least.” It’s just true, since markets mostly police themselves.
In a free market, every exchange must be voluntary. Nothing is bought or sold unless both parties think they benefit. So good businesses expand and bad ones atrophy. We don’t need bureaucrats to interfere!
