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Full-Text Articles in Law
Interring The Unitary Executive, Christine Kexel Chabot
Interring The Unitary Executive, Christine Kexel Chabot
Notre Dame Law Review
The President’s power to remove and control subordinate executive officers has sparked a constitutional debate that began in 1789 and rages on today. Leading originalists claim that the Constitution created a “unitary executive” President whose plenary removal power affords her “exclusive control” over subordinates’ exercise of executive power. Text assigning the President a removal power and exclusive control appears nowhere in the Constitution, however, and unitary scholars have instead relied on select historical understandings and negative inferences drawn from a supposed lack of independent regulatory structures at the Founding. The comprehensive historical record introduced by this Article lays this debate …
Delegation, Administration, And Improvisation, Kevin Arlyck
Delegation, Administration, And Improvisation, Kevin Arlyck
Notre Dame Law Review
Nondelegation originalism is having its moment. Recent Supreme Court opinions suggest that a majority of Justices may be prepared to impose strict constitutional limits on Congress’s power to delegate policymaking authority to the executive branch. In response, scholars have scoured the historical record for evidence affirming or refuting a more stringent version of nondelegation than current Supreme Court doctrine demands. Though the debate ranges widely, sharp disputes have arisen over whether a series of apparently broad Founding-era delegations defeat originalist arguments in favor of a more demanding modern doctrine. Proponents—whom I call “nondelegationists”—argue that these historical delegations can all be …