A king, not a chief executive

Trump v. Slaughter, June 29, 2026 Supreme Court of the United States

Roberts, C.J. :

 'The Constitution vests “[t]he executive Power” in a “President of the United States of America” and instructs that he “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Art. II, §§1, 3. To vest the executive power in one person was to establish a hierarchy—a “Chief Magistrate” with whom the buck stops, and below him various “assistants or deputies” who “derive their offices from his appointment” and remain “subject to his superintendence.” The Federalist No. 72, p. 436 (A. Hamilton). To remain accountable to the President, those officers must be removable by the President.

***What text, history, and structure settle, the Court’s precedent confirms—the President may remove his subordinates at will. Pp. 13– 25. (1) As early as 1839, the Court reaffirmed what the First Congress had held. It was “very early adopted, as the practical construction of the Constitution,” the Court noted, that the power “to remove, where the tenure of the office was not fixed by the Constitution,” was “vested in the President alone.” Ex parte Hennen, 13 Pet. 230, 259. See also Parsons v. United States, 167 U. S. 324, 330 (“[T]he decision of Congress in 1789, and the universal practice of the Government under it, ha[s] settled the question beyond any power of alteration”). The Court's landmark decision in Myers v. United States, 272 U. S. 52, confirmed the President’s power to fire his subordinates at will.