Speaking on Chevron deference at Duke University School of Law in 1989, Justice Antonin Scalia told the audience to “lean back, clutch the sides of your chairs, and steel yourselves for a pretty dull lecture.” Perhaps he would have withheld his cynicism if he could have seen the Supreme Court’s administrative-law rulings in the past year.
This Essay concerns a constitutional puzzle, the puzzle of for-cause removal. For a century the Supreme Court has been attempting to answer a simple question: when is it constitutional for Congress to provide that an agency head or lower official can be removed only for cause?
Chief Justice John Roberts mystified and frustrated court watchers with his opinions in the closing weeks of the Supreme Court’s October 2019 term.
