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An influential conservative legal scholar who once clerked for justice clarence thomas But alarm bells have rung Supreme Courtrecent trend of handing more power to President Donald Trump, Warned that it disregards the original interpretation of the Constitution.
Over the past nine months, the conservative branch of the court has expanded Trump’s authority, allowing him to remake the federal government in his vision, including firing the heads of independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit System Protection Board.
While the court’s liberal judges, as well as Democratic officials, have loudly condemned the court’s decision, Caleb Nelson, a Professor at the University of Virginia The law school, whose work is constantly cited by members of the court’s conservative wing, has joined them.
Sharply criticizing the Court’s interpretation of executive authority, Nelson wrote Excerpt for NYU’s Democracy Project The justices can hand the President “more power, I think, than any sane person should have, and more power than any member of the Founding Generation could expect.”
Nelson, who clerked for Thomas in the late 90s and worked by the conservative Legal group Federalist SocietyCriticized the Supreme Court for misinterpreting both the history and text of the Constitution.
“Bombshell! – Caleb Nelson, one of the nation’s most respected originalist scholars, comes out against the unitary executive interpretation of Article II,” said William Baud, another influential legal scholar. Written on BlueSky.
Richard Pildes, a professor at NYU who co-founded the Democracy Project, told the new York Times“If a highly respected originalist scholar like Professor Nelson, on whom the Court often relies, denies that originalism supports the unitary executive principle, then this inevitably raises serious questions about an originalist justification for the Court’s emerging approach.”
“Caleb Nelson is one of the most principled people I have met in academia,” said Rutgers law professor Adam Cruz. Written on X. “And so perhaps not surprisingly, I think he’s right—and the court should accept that.”
Nelson, with Justice Thomas, Samuel AlitoNeil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, identify themselves as “originalists”, or those who believe that the Constitution should be interpreted as it was originally written.
Article II of the Constitution states, “The Executive Power shall be vested in the President of the United States.” Some legal scholars have used that section to argue in favor of the unitary-executive theory, or the idea that the President has sole authority over the entire executive.
Under that logic, independent federal agencies cannot act independently of the White House – despite Congress setting them up that way to prevent presidential influence. But Trump and others have used the same argument to convince the court that they should be allowed to remove the people in charge of independent agencies.
But in Nelson’s article published in September, he said the court, under the guidance of Chief Justice John Roberts, had misinterpreted Article II to allow the president to seize power and ignored the Framers’ intentions to separate powers between the branches of government.
Nelson wrote, “I am an originalist, and if the original meaning of the Constitution compels this result, I agree that the Supreme Court should respect it.” “But both the text and history of Article II are far more ambiguous than the current Court suggests.”
Nelson warned that judges should consider the “consequences” of the interpretation they choose with the same ambiguity as in dismissing the heads of independent agencies.
Nelson said, “I hope that the judges will not act as if their hands are tied and they cannot consider any consequences of their chosen interpretations.”