Odd Lots · Friday, July 17, 2026
The discussion traces the historical evolution of presidential removal powers, starting with the Supreme Court's 1935 Humphrey's Executor decision, which limited the president's ability to remove officials from independent agencies. Lev Menand explains how recent Supreme Court rulings are dismantling this precedent, creating a 'Hamilton exception' for the Fed while weakening other agencies' protections.
“Humphrey's Executors is a Supreme Court decision from nineteen thirty five unanimous Supreme Court decision rejecting President Roosevelt's attempt to remove a member of the Federal Trade Commission without cause.”
“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 nineteen twenty six all this time.”
“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.”