By Char­lotte Har­vey 
UConn Jour­nal­ism

A polit­i­cal the­o­ry that has been advanc­ing for 100 years is now more influ­en­tial than ever before – tak­ing cen­ter stage in recent Supreme Court argu­ments, despite many experts claim­ing it invalid.  

The uni­tary exec­u­tive the­o­ry is a polit­i­cal, legal and con­sti­tu­tion­al the­o­ry that asserts that all the pow­er of the exec­u­tive branch is held by one indi­vid­ual: the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.  

Today, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion is stretch­ing the the­o­ry beyond what has ever been pre­vi­ous­ly attempt­ed and is using the the­o­ry to jus­ti­fy a wide range of unprece­dent­ed actions. A recent Supreme Court case address­ing the the­o­ry, Trump v. Slaugh­ter, began oral argu­ments on Dec. 8, 2025. It may over­turn near­ly a cen­tu­ry of legal prece­dent and expand the pow­ers of the pres­i­den­cy, fur­ther erod­ing the sep­a­ra­tion between the pres­i­dent and inde­pen­dent agen­cies. 

Sotirios Bar­ber, an emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of con­sti­tu­tion­al law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame who has writ­ten about the the­o­ry, is among the con­sti­tu­tion­al schol­ars that deny the uni­tary exec­u­tive the­o­ry has legit­i­ma­cy at all. He said it relies on a mis­un­der­stand­ing of his­to­ry and mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of our country’s foun­da­tion­al texts. 

“This the­o­ry has cogency entire­ly because Amer­i­cans don’t know too much about their Con­sti­tu­tion,” he said.  

A quarrel of the first Congress 

The argu­ment over the scope of the president’s pow­er goes back to the very first Con­gress in 1789. 

Jed Shuger­man, a law pro­fes­sor at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law, said that there was a split among mem­bers as to whether the president’s removal pow­er was grant­ed by the Con­sti­tu­tion and con­trolled sole­ly by the chief exec­u­tive, or if the removal pow­er was like the pres­i­den­t’s appoint­ment pow­er and required Sen­ate approval. 

Shuger­man, who sub­mit­ted an ami­cus brief to the Supreme Court in the 2024 case Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion v. Jaresky – anoth­er case the Supreme Court decid­ed with impli­ca­tions for the removal pow­er and the struc­ture of inde­pen­dent agen­cies — refers to the two sides as the “pres­i­den­tial­ists” and the “con­gres­sion­al­ists.” 

Pro­po­nents of the uni­tary exec­u­tive the­o­ry argue that the “pres­i­den­tial­ist” fac­tion, led by James Madi­son and Alexan­der Hamil­ton, won out and that the Con­sti­tu­tion does, in fact, grant the pres­i­dent the pow­er to remove offi­cials with­in the exec­u­tive branch with­out lim­it. 

They cite two claus­es in Arti­cle 2 of the Con­sti­tu­tion as the basis for their the­o­ry – the Take Care Clause and the Vest­ing Clause. They argue that the first clause gives the pres­i­dent the abil­i­ty to remove all offi­cials and direct every agency with­in the exec­u­tive branch. They argue that the sec­ond vests all exec­u­tive pow­er in the pres­i­dent alone and that every­one with­in the branch is sim­ply car­ry­ing out their bid­ding and allows removal if the pres­i­dent does not believe they are car­ry­ing out their will.  

The admin­is­tra­tion has also argued these points in court.  

Trump v. Slaugh­ter, con­cerns the March 2025 fir­ing of Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion­er Rebec­ca Slaugh­ter. Trump had nom­i­nat­ed her to serve on the com­mis­sion in 2018. She chal­lenged her fir­ing in court, argu­ing Trump does not have the abil­i­ty to fire her except for just cause.  

In the administration’s brief in Trump v. Slaugh­ter, Trump’s lawyers leaned heav­i­ly upon Arti­cle 2 and the pow­ers it grants the pres­i­dent. 

“The Framers ‘sought to encour­age ener­getic, vig­or­ous, deci­sive, and speedy exe­cu­tion of the laws by plac­ing in the hands of a sin­gle, con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly indis­pens­able, indi­vid­ual the ulti­mate author­i­ty that, in respect to the oth­er branch­es, the Con­sti­tu­tion divides among many,’ ” Trump’s lawyer’s wrote in their brief, quot­ing the Supreme Court opin­ion in the 1997 case Clin­ton v. Jones. 

“We think that the text of the Con­sti­tu­tion con­fers the exec­u­tive pow­er, all of it, on the pres­i­dent,” Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al D. John Sauer said in oral argu­ments. 

Shuger­man and oth­er schol­ars argue that this is an inac­cu­rate inter­pre­ta­tion of his­to­ry and the mean­ing of the Con­sti­tu­tion.  

“The his­tor­i­cal evi­dence and the orig­i­nal pub­lic mean­ing of the Con­sti­tu­tion is over­whelm­ing that the Con­sti­tu­tion did not give the pres­i­dent uncon­di­tion­al removal pow­er of the exec­u­tive branch,” Shuger­man said in an inter­view.  

Bar­ber argues that even if the framers of the Con­sti­tu­tion had intend­ed the uni­tary exec­u­tive the­o­ry to be true regard­ing removal pow­er, they did not plan for the pres­i­dent to become all-pow­er­ful in rul­ing the exec­u­tive branch. Even Hamil­ton, a lead­ing fig­ure of the pres­i­den­tial­ist fac­tion, did not pic­ture the exec­u­tive branch hav­ing more pow­er than the oth­er branch­es of gov­ern­ment, he said. 

“Hamil­ton assumes, yeah, you’ve got a pow­er­ful pres­i­den­cy, but you also have a pres­i­den­cy that’s checked by oth­er branch­es of the gov­ern­ment that are also pow­er­ful,” Bar­ber said.  

The Modern Legal History 

There is no dis­pute that there are many posi­tions with­in the exec­u­tive branch that are sub­ject to removal by the pres­i­dent at will, such as cab­i­net offi­cials and the president’s advis­ers, which gen­er­al­ly change with each admin­is­tra­tion.   

“You can’t sad­dle the pres­i­dent with advis­ers that the pres­i­dent doesn’t want around,” said Daniel K. Birk, a lawyer and con­sti­tu­tion­al schol­ar who pre­vi­ous­ly served as a vis­it­ing assis­tant pro­fes­sor at Chica­go-Kent Col­lege of Law.  

One of the most impor­tant ques­tions being brought before the Court is whether Con­gress can cre­ate agen­cies with inde­pen­dent lead­ers that are intend­ed to be insu­lat­ed from polit­i­cal influ­ence. This prac­tice dates back to at least 1790, when Con­gress cre­at­ed the “Sink­ing Fund Com­mis­sion” to pay debt and dis­perse funds with com­mis­sion­ers that could not be removed by the pres­i­dent. 

In 1935, the court reversed its posi­tion in anoth­er case, Humphrey’s Execu­tor v. Unit­ed States, which con­sid­ered Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roo­sevelt’s s fir­ing of an FTC mem­ber over pol­i­cy dis­agree­ments, even though the act cre­at­ing the agency in 1914 spec­i­fied that com­mis­sion­ers could only be fired for “just cause.”  

Roosevelt’s admin­is­tra­tion argued that not allow­ing him to fire the com­mis­sion­er undu­ly lim­it­ed his pow­er. He lost. The sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers, the jus­tices rea­soned, neces­si­tat­ed Con­gress hav­ing the pow­er to cre­ate agen­cies that are out of the pres­i­den­t’s reach and “free from the con­trol or coer­cive influ­ence, direct or indi­rect.”  

In the years after that deci­sion, the Supreme Court relied on the Humphrey’s deci­sion as prece­dent in cas­es such as Myron Wiener v. Unit­ed States in 1958 in anoth­er instance of pres­i­den­tial removal.  The court opin­ion stat­ed  that the “assump­tion” in the Myers case that the pres­i­dent had inher­ent con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­ers to remove offi­cials regard­less of what restric­tions Con­gress imposed on their tenure was incor­rect. They said the think­ing in the Myers deci­sion was “short-lived,” hav­ing been over­turned less than 10 years lat­er with a unan­i­mous court rul­ing in the Humphrey’s case, that includ­ed some of the judges who had ruled in the major­i­ty in the pre­vi­ous case.                

Until 2020, the under­stand­ing was that the prece­dent set in the Humphrey’s case applied and that pres­i­dents could only remove inde­pen­dent agency heads for just cause. That restric­tion was chal­lenged in regards to the struc­ture of the Con­sumer Finan­cial Pro­tec­tion Bureau, cre­at­ed after the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis.  

In Seila Law v. CFPB, a law firm that was being inves­ti­gat­ed by the CFPB chal­lenged the agency’s con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty when declin­ing to com­ply with orders to pro­duce doc­u­ments. When Con­gress cre­at­ed the agency in 2010, they spec­i­fied that the agency would have a sin­gle direc­tor that served a five-year term and could be removed for “inef­fi­cien­cy, neglect of duty, or malfea­sance out­side of office” — the three con­di­tions that can be con­sid­ered a “just cause” fir­ing. 

The Supreme Court decid­ed that the struc­ture of the agency where the pres­i­dent could only remove the direc­tor for cause vio­lat­ed the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers under the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion. They said the Myers deci­sion was the appro­pri­ate prece­dent instead of the more recent Humphrey’s case, which they said rep­re­sent­ed an excep­tion to it.  

In oral argu­ments, Chief Jus­tice John Roberts echoed Sauer’s lan­guage, call­ing the for­mer prece­dent “just a dried husk of what­ev­er peo­ple used to think it was.” 

Expanding Presidential Power 

Trump was not the first pres­i­dent to expand the pow­ers of the pres­i­den­cy under the guise of the uni­tary exec­u­tive the­o­ry, though schol­ars dis­agree when the more extreme inter­pre­ta­tion being used today began to take form.  

Some point to the pres­i­den­cy of Richard Nixon, while oth­ers cite Ronald Rea­gan.  

Mitch Sol­len­berg­er, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Dear­born, said that before Trump, George W. Bush used the uni­tary exec­u­tive the­o­ry to expand pres­i­den­tial pow­er fol­low­ing the ter­ror­ist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. 

“He was real­ly, up to that point, the most aggres­sive at doing it,” Sol­len­berg­er said. In this sto­ry of expand­ing pow­er, the phe­nom­e­non has been bipar­ti­san, he said. Though “flare-ups” have occurred under Trump and Bush, one shouldn’t assume this is just a Repub­li­can pres­i­dent prob­lem, he said.   

“I think with pres­i­den­tial pow­er, there’s no ratch­et­ing down,” Sol­len­berg­er said. “It’s always ratch­et­ing up.” 

Birk not­ed that once the pow­er has been giv­en to the exec­u­tive branch, it is incred­i­bly hard to rein back in and can be deployed by any pres­i­dent that fol­lows from what­ev­er par­ty. 

“The prob­lem with let­ting the exec­u­tive start to take more author­i­ty is that it nev­er goes back into the bot­tle, right?” he said.  “It’s hard to get it back in.” 

Pro­po­nents of the uni­tary exec­u­tive the­o­ry believe that the pres­i­dent has not only the right to remove whomev­er he pleas­es from the exec­u­tive branch, but that he must, so that he can regain con­trol of the gov­ern­ment.  

The more than 900-page Project 2025 plan for a con­ser­v­a­tive pres­i­den­cy authored by the Her­itage Foun­da­tion and those with ties to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion argues that bureau­crats are the prob­lem and that it is the pres­i­dent who serves as the guid­ing and con­trol­ling force in the exec­u­tive branch. It cites the pow­er grant­ed to the pres­i­dent by the Con­sti­tu­tion.  

“The mod­ern con­ser­v­a­tive President’s task is to lim­it, con­trol, and direct the exec­u­tive branch on behalf of the Amer­i­can peo­ple,” the doc­u­ment states.  

A sec­tion writ­ten by Rus­sell Vought, now Trump’s direc­tor of the Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get, states: “it is the Pres­i­den­t’s agen­da that should mat­ter to the depart­ments and agen­cies, not their own.” 

In a 2025 inter­view with Tuck­er Carl­son, Vought was explic­it about the admin­is­tra­tion’s views that the chief exec­u­tive has sole con­trol and that bureau­crat­ic inde­pen­dence needs to be snuffed out.  

“Num­ber one is going after the whole notion of inde­pen­dence,” Vought said. “There are no inde­pen­dent agen­cies. Con­gress may have viewed them as such — SEC, or the FCC, CFPB, the whole alpha­bet soup — but that is not some­thing that the Con­sti­tu­tion under­stands. So, there may be dif­fer­ent strate­gies with each one of them about how you dis­man­tle them, but as an admin­is­tra­tion, the whole notion of an inde­pen­dent agency should be thrown out.” 

Concerns over checks and balances 

Mark J. Rozell, the found­ing dean of the Schar School of Pol­i­cy and Gov­ern­ment at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty, said legal experts and schol­ars are con­cerned that the oth­er branch­es of gov­ern­ment have not act­ed to check the president’s pow­er. 

“Many con­sti­tu­tion­al schol­ars find this to be quite scary, frankly, that there has not been sig­nif­i­cant push­back by those with  coun­ter­vail­ing pow­ers,” he said. “Con­gress has an insti­tu­tion­al inter­est in pro­tect­ing its own pre­rog­a­tives and pow­ers.”  

They have an inher­ent moti­va­tion to keep a pres­i­dent from act­ing as the sin­gu­lar pow­er of gov­ern­ment.

“But that’s exact­ly what this pres­i­dent has been doing because Con­gress has not stood its ground,” Rozell said.  

Shuger­man said that while past admin­is­tra­tions have stretched exec­u­tive pow­er in ques­tion­able ways, there has nev­er been a pres­i­dent who has pushed exec­u­tive pow­er as far as Trump. 

Shuger­man said that the Supreme Court is not only fail­ing to serve as a check on the pres­i­dent, but that they are empow­er­ing Trump to push his pow­er far­ther than his pre­de­ces­sors. 

He argued that a prime exam­ple of the Supreme Court doing this was the 2024 case Trump v. Unit­ed States where the court ruled that the pres­i­dent is immune from crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion for actions tak­en while pres­i­dent. 

Shuger­man said that this land­mark deci­sion, along­side the court’s opin­ions that have expand­ed pres­i­den­tial pow­er, have embold­ened Trump and giv­en him the green light to do things pres­i­dents have nev­er attempt­ed before. 

He said that con­ser­v­a­tives in gov­ern­ment agree with the sen­ti­ment expressed in Project 2025 that bureau­cra­cy and bureau­crats are the real issue in the gov­ern­ment. This belief, he said, has guid­ed the Supreme Court in their deci­sions and pre­vent­ed the con­ser­v­a­tives in Con­gress from inter­ven­ing.  

“I think there’s such an ide­o­log­i­cal assump­tion that the bureau­cra­cy is the prob­lem – that the deep state is the prob­lem — that they will ignore the increas­ing­ly obvi­ous fact that author­i­tar­i­an exec­u­tives are a much big­ger prob­lem than some bureau­crats in D.C.,” Shuger­man said. 

Sol­len­berg­er also stressed the need for the oth­er branch­es of gov­ern­ment to ful­fill their role as a check on pres­i­den­tial pow­er and the dan­gers of allow­ing the pres­i­dent to take gov­ern­men­tal action uni­lat­er­al­ly with­out restraint. 

He spoke specif­i­cal­ly about the actions Trump is tak­ing under the guise of exer­cis­ing emer­gency pow­ers as a prime exam­ple of a sit­u­a­tion where the oth­er branch­es need to inter­vene and act as a check. This kind of exer­cise of exec­u­tive pow­er that uses the uni­tary exec­u­tive the­o­ry as a legal basis, he said, is dan­ger­ous.  

“If this is allowed to stand and the pres­i­dent has this kind of uni­lat­er­al author­i­ty with­out ques­tion, with­out checks com­ing from par­tic­u­lar­ly the judi­cia­ry, then the pres­i­dent can say the sky is black, even if it’s blue. Say it’s pink and orange even though it’s blue, right? You name it and he’ll be able to do it and not be chal­lenged,” Sol­len­berg­er said. 

Lily Gold­blatt con­tributed report­ing to this arti­cle.