'Bombshell!' Ex-clerk to Clarence Thomas sends shockwaves with Supreme Court warning

[In It to Win It]

https://www.rawstory.com/humphreys-executor-trump/

The U.S. Supreme Court seems almost certain to side with President Donald Trump in an upcoming challenge to his authority to fire government officials for any reason, but a leading conservative legal scholar sent a warning that could give the justices pause.

University of Virginia law professor Caleb Nelson, a leading originalist scholar whose work has been cited by all of the court's conservative members in more than a dozen opinions, published an article Sept. 29 for the Democracy Project that has sent shockwaves through the legal community, reported the New York Times.

“Bombshell!” posted University of Chicago law professor William Baude on social media. “Caleb Nelson, one of the most respected originalist scholars in the country, comes out against the unitary executive interpretation” of the Constitution.

Nelson, a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, argued that the text of the Constitution and historical evidence shows Congress has broad authority to shape the executive branch and place limits on the president's ability to fire officials.

"If most of what the federal government currently does on a daily basis is 'executive,' and if the President must have full control over each and every exercise of 'executive' power by the federal government (including an unlimitable ability to remove all or almost all executive officers for reasons good or bad), then the President has an enormous amount of power — more power, I think, than any sensible person should want anyone to have, and more power than any member of the founding generation could have anticipated," Nelson wrote.