Trump v. Slaughter · ¶46

In a scholarly opinion, Chief Justice Taft rejected Myers’s suit and reaffirmed the President’s power to fire his subordinates at will. That power arose, he wrote for the Court, from the Constitution’s text, history, and structure, just as the First Congress had held in 1789. See id., at 136. “The vesting of the executive power in the President was essentially a grant of the power to execute the laws,” Chief Justice Taft explained. Id., at 117. “As he is charged specifically to take care that [the laws] be faithfully executed, the reasonable implication,” he continued, “was that as part of his executive power” he must be able to “remov[e] those for whom he can not continue to be responsible.” Ibid. “Mr. Madison and his associates” made this same point, the Chief Justice noted, and they “dwelt at length upon the necessity there was for construing Article II to give the President the sole…

slip opinion, revised 7/07/26
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