Lev Menand
speaker
1,295 appearances
6 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 17 Jul
Lev Menand’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I went and I enjoyed it.
Okay.
That's all you... Okay.
Humphrey's executor is a Supreme Court decision from 1935, unanimous Supreme Court decision rejecting President Roosevelt's attempt to remove a member of the Federal Trade Commission without cause.
And the court said, Congress passed a law, said you can only remove members of the Federal Trade Commission for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.
And you don't have some inherent constitutional authority to override or ignore that law.
Now, Roosevelt had reason to think he did.
The Supreme Court had decided in 1926, split decision, that the president was allowed to fire a postmaster without the consent of the Senate, which the statute required.
And Chief Justice Taft wrote this long opinion saying the president has these inherent powers.
And everybody interpreted that opinion to mean
Federal Trade Commission.
You could fire those people.
And so Roosevelt was just like, I'm doing what Taft said presidents could do.
And the court was like, no, no, no, no, no.
That's okay for a purely executive officer, but we're going to cabin that Myers decision.
And if the agency or the government official has functions that are quasi-judicial or quasi-legislative, like the Federal Trade Commission and like a whole bunch of other agencies, then it's totally appropriate for Congress to put limits on the president's power to remove these officers, and the president doesn't have any inherent constitutional authority.
Ever since that decision, the presidentialists have been aggrieved
Humphrey's executor, it unfairly limited Myers and this conception of this sort of president who can oversee the whole executive branch.
And in a way, what we're experiencing is the great victory of the anti-Humphrey's executor crowd who have been fighting to get back their version of Myers from 1926 all this time.
I can't emphasize this enough.
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