Odd Lots · Friday, July 17, 2026
The Supreme Court's recent decisions, particularly in the context of the 'Slaughter Rule' and its application to agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, have raised questions about the independence of the Federal Reserve. Legal scholars Lev Menand and Nathan Tankus discuss how the Court's reliance on a 'history and tradition' analysis, notably drawing from Second Amendment jurisprudence, has created a unique carve-out for the Fed, while potentially undermining the independence of other agencies.
“Now the FED is not safe. This is not a good situation that the FED has found itself in. The FED is an endangered species. Now it might be the only independent agency that's constitutionally permissible. The Court has gone out of its way to de legitimize independence and nonpartisan administration, and then inexplicably they've said, but it's okay for monetary policy.”
“And so they say, well, we look to the sorts of regulations that took place in the founding period, and then we understand that that is those exceptions are okay, and so there's now Second amendmateur Its prudence has turned into this wild like game with hiring all these early American historians and all these arguments about what type of firearm rules there were in the seventeen eighties to try to decide what analogus Congress is allowed to have or states are allowed to have today.”
“The huge mistake that they're making, just a fundamental logical failure here, is that the First Bank of the United States, which is what Alexander Hamilton was advocating for was a investor owned commercial bank. It was not in any way abrogating the president's rights to remove executive officers.”