[DFHippie]

That's always the question with this unitary executive business. They believe this is the government defined by the Constitution, regardless of precedent. Do they believe it is a good system of government? Do they believe this is the government intended or rather the government allowed by legal loophole, vagueness, or contradiction? Because it seems like they think the president should rule like a monarch because they happen to control the presidency at the current moment, not because it is a wise and effective system of government.

[ike2792]

It's a fair question to ask "who are independent executive agency heads accountable to" in a constitutional context. It is true that the Executive Branch has grown far beyond what the Founding Fathers could have imagined, but the idea of a unitary executive is that the President is responsible and accountable for everything that happens in the Executive Branch. If the voters don't like what the Executive Branch is doing, they can replace the President in the next election. What happens if voters don't like what independent executive agencies are doing? There's no democratic recourse.

Think of a scenario where a President was elected with a large-ish majority and promised during the campaign to change broadband regulations to reduce broadband prices across the country. Unfortunately, the FCC commissioners were all appointed by the previous president and block this policy change that the voters clearly support. How does that square with democratic accountability?

[techblueberry]

The president should be the weakest branch of government. If laws need to change, congress should do it. That is democratic accountability.

[rayiner]

How can you cite “precedent” when Myers v. United States decided this issue in favor of the unitary executive back in 1926? The administrative state that exists today was only facilitated by the FDR Supreme Court overruling a bunch of precedents.

Go read the Federalist Papers. The founders thought very hard about who should exercise which powers and how they should be selected. They did not intend for 99% of the actual government operations to be run by “independent” executive officials that were insulated from elections. That’s something we made up in the 20th century in response to trendy ideas about “scientific government.”

[jfengel]

The Federalist Papers is not "the founders". It's Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. There were numerous factions running around the Constitutional Convention, and they negotiated the final document together.

I don't understand why the Federalist Papers gets cited as if it were part of the Constitution. It is not a definitive source of anything except the opinion of those two (three, with Jay) men.

[curt15]

>How can you cite “precedent” when Myers v. United States decided this issue in favor of the unitary executive back in 1926? The administrative state that exists today was only facilitated by the FDR Supreme Court overruling a bunch of precedents.

And in doing so they reshaped the precedent. One can't claim Brown v Board is not precedent just because Plessy v Ferguson already spoke on the same matter.

[buerkle]

Technically late 19th century with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Commerce_Commission

[zimpenfish]

> The founders thought very hard about who should exercise which powers and how they should be selected.

Which would be perfectly fine as a basis if we were still in the 18th century.

Things are, I believe, somewhat different now and what a bunch of rich old white men thought then isn't all that relevant now except as a historical oddity.

[miltonlost]

The fact that you still call the "founders" the "founders" as if they were a single unified person/entity with non-conflicting values shows me what kind of "originalist" jurisprudence you go for.

[CGMthrowaway]

The concept of independent agencies (that is, those overseen by Congress rather than the president) was controversial long before, and for far longer, than it wasn't.

[hexator]

Yes but let's not pretend this isn't a new interpretation.