Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2025
Abstract
The executive removal power figures prominently on the Supreme Court's current agenda. That agenda is beset, however, by a historical misunderstanding, when it comes to multi-member bodies, which too often are assumed to be modern creatures. This paper provides crucial new historical evidence showing that the Founders, indeed a who's who list of Founders, approved and even sat on administrative commissions in the Republic's early years. The Founders called these early commissions "independent," deferred to their judgments as "final," and demanded that the members be "impartial." Nothing in this paper contravenes the current position of the Supreme Court that Presidents may remove executive officers at will. It does suggest, however, that as the Court considers Presidents and multi-member commissions, that it should remember that Presidents and Congresses, in the early Republic, endorsed such bodies precisely because Presidents and Congresses believed that, for some tasks, political partisanship was a danger to the administration of the rule of law, and to the nation's most urgent needs.
Scholarly Commons Citation
Nourse, Victoria Frances, "The New History Of Multi-Member Commissions At The Founding, 1789-1840" (2025). Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works. 2685.
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/2685
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