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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
The Dependent Origins Of Independent Agencies: The Interstate Commerce Commission, The Tenure Of Office Act, And The Rise Of Modern Campaign Finance, Jed Handelsman Shugerman
The Dependent Origins Of Independent Agencies: The Interstate Commerce Commission, The Tenure Of Office Act, And The Rise Of Modern Campaign Finance, Jed Handelsman Shugerman
Faculty Scholarship
Independent regulatory agencies are some of the most powerful institutions in the United States, and we think of them today as designed to be insulated from political control. This Article shows that their origins were the opposite: this model first emerged in the late nineteenth century because it offered more political control.
The modern executive's design of unitary presidential control over most offices, alongside "independent" regulatory agencies, took shape in the winter of 1886-1887. Congress repealed the Tenure of Office Act, giving the President the unchecked power to dismiss principal officers and ending the Senate's power to protect those officers. …