SCOTUS' Reputation at Stake in Slaughter Decision: Legal Scholar
If the U.S. Supreme Court rejects President Donald Trump’s firing of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and defies conventional wisdom (see 2512080047), it would go a long way to counter the prevailing view that the court is doing Trump’s bidding regardless of the law, argued Peter Shane, chair in law emeritus at Ohio State University, in Friday's Washington Monthly. If SCOTUS upholds the firing, Trump could also fire members of the FCC with whom he disagrees, including Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez.
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“As of August, the public’s view of the Court remains at an all-time low,” Shane wrote in the opinion piece. “Public opinion of the Court has become highly polarized, a bad sign for its legitimacy. … The quality of the Court’s reasoning in Slaughter will be crucial to restoring the Court’s public reputation.”
Over the past 11 months, SCOTUS “has repeatedly enabled Trump’s worst power grabs by issuing emergency orders without careful argument and most often without detailed (or any) majority analysis,” Shane said. "Now that the justices must face a central issue of presidential power" in Slaughter, "judicial reasoning that meets the moment would buttress the prestige of an institution that, in Alexander Hamilton’s words, can rely on 'neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment.'"