Trump v. Slaughter - Annotated Opinion

 The idea that one President would be in charge was by no means a foregone conclusion in 1787. Just ten years earlier, the colonists had “thrown off the Yoke” of King George III and his colonial governors, 5 Papers of John Adams 26 (R. Taylor ed. 1983) (S. Adams), who had laid a “[f]oundation sufficient on which to erect a Tyranny,” J. Adams, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams 260 (L. Butterfield ed. 1961). Now citizens, they had no intention of reestablishing “the kingly office” by another name. 1 Papers of Thomas Jefferson 337 (J. Boyd ed. 1950). Thus the flurry of state constitutions that followed the Declaration of Independence “made of the gubernatorial magistrate a new kind of creature, a very pale reflection indeed of his regal ancestor.” G. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787, p. 136 (1998) (Wood); see also J. Rakove, Original Meanings 250–252 (1996). Almost every State had but a nominal Governor, who could act only with his council’s consent. These early chief executives were “little more than chairmen of their executive boards.” Wood 138.

 The Framers chose to depart from this model, for they had seen its flaws up close. Common was the complaint that the States’ feeble and divided executives left no “effectual check” for “the instability & encroachments” of legislatures. See 2 Farrand’s Records 35 (J. Madison). For “fear” of “monarchical . . . power,” William Livingston lamented, the States “improvidently” devised executives “too weak & inefficatious to operate with proper energy & vigour.” 5 Papers of William Livingston 56–57 (C. Prince, M. Lustig, & D. Vorhees eds. 1988).

 The Convention was determined not to make the same mistake. See Wood 467. So when delegates objected to “unity in the Executive magistracy” as “the foetus of  monarchy,” 1 Farrand’s Records 66 (E. Randolph), others could soundly reply that the concern was quite backward. “[I]nstead of being the fetus of Monarchy,” they explained, “[u]nity in the Executive” was “the best safeguard against” it—for only a “single Person” could produce the “vigor and activity” necessary to preserve the Constitution’s separation of powers, and only a “single Person” could make the office “responsibl[e]” to the people. Id., at 66, 109 (J. Wilson). “Give him an able Council and it will thwart him; a weak one and he will shelter himself under their sanction.” 2 id., at 329 (C. Pinckney). Any more than one person in charge, as James Wilson put it, “oftener serves to cover, than prevent malpractices.” 1 id., at 97.

 That the Constitution forged a new path was not hidden from those who ratified it. Hamilton frankly conceded that only two States thus far “have intrusted the executive authority wholly to single men,” The Federalist No. 70, at 424, anticipating Roger Sherman’s critique of the Constitution that every other government has “a Council of advice, without which the first magistrate could not act,” 1 Farrand’s Records 97. To Hamilton, however, that was the point. Unlike most States, the Federal Government would have “a vigorous executive” who could act with “secrecy . . . and dispatch”—and would not be able to “conceal [his] faults” behind a council. The Federalist No. 70, at 423–424, 427. “[A] plurality in the executive,” Hamilton argued, “tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility.” Id., at 427. “It often becomes impossible, amidst mutual accusations, to determine on whom the blame or the punishment of a pernicious measure, or series of pernicious measures, ought really to fall.” Id., at 428. If the executive power were not placed in a “single hand,” then “the people” would be “deprive[d] . . . of the two greatest securities they can have for the faithful exercise of any delegated power”—“the restraints of public opinion” and the “opportunity of discovering with facility  and clearness the misconduct of the persons they trust.” Id., at 424, 428–429.

 In opting for one President, however, the Framers did not opt for the President to work alone. They knew (as our first President would write) that it would be “impossib[le]” for just “one man . . . to perform all the great business of the State.” 30 Writings of George Washington 334 (J. Fitzpatrick ed. 1939). So they anticipated that Congress would “institut[e] the great Departments” and allow the President to “appoint[ ] officers therein, to assist [him] in discharging the duties of his trust.” Ibid. As James Wilson explained at the Convention, “there can be no good Executive without a responsible appointment of officers to execute.” 2 Farrand’s Records 538–539.

 These officers were to serve as envoys of the President, not his equals. Their very purpose, after all, was to assist him “to discharge his arduous employment,” not theirs. 4 Debates on the Constitution 109 (J. Elliot 2d ed. 1891) (J. Iredell) (emphasis added). As such, the Government’s “ministers” were required to “exercise their functions in subordination to the Executive,” whether their tasks were big or small. 2 Farrand’s Records 54 (G. Morris). Hamilton made the same point. “The persons . . . to whose immediate management” the President’s powers “are committed, ought to be considered as the assistants or deputies of the Chief Magistrate, and on this account, they ought to derive their offices from his appointment, at least from his nomination, and ought to be subject to his superintendence.” The Federalist No. 72, at 436. In so structuring the Government, the Convention “rejected a committee-style Executive Branch in favor of a unitary and accountable President, standing under law, yet over” his department heads. A. Amar, Some Opinions on the Opinion Clause, 82 Va. L. Rev. 647 (1996). It helped in reaching that conclusion, of course, that everyone at the Convention knew who that President would be—the Convention’s presiding officer, George  Washington. See J. Flexner, George Washington and the New Nation: 1783–1793, pp. 133–134 (1970).³

 Because these officers were subject to the President’s superintendence, they had to be removable by him at will. For one, that was just part of what it meant to wield “the executive power,” as it was understood at the time of ratification. Jefferson wrote as early as 1780 that “[t]he power of appointing and removing executive officers [is] inherent in [the] Executive,” as “[h]e who appoints may remove.” 4 Papers of Thomas Jefferson 281 (1951). And as to this power, the Constitution’s words were chosen carefully—it was the President who would “appoint” the principal “Officers of the United States,” with the Senate providing “Advice and Consent.” Art. II, §2, cl. 2; cf. The Federalist No. 66, at 404 (A. Hamilton) (“[I]n all the governments with which we are acquainted . . . those who hold offices during pleasure [are] dependent on the pleasure of those who appoint them”). If the Framers intended to depart from this convention, one might have expected them to say so.

 For another, the power to remove at will was a necessary corollary of the Constitution’s design. The “unity” of the  Executive Branch would be “destroyed,” Hamilton wrote, if it were vested “ostensibly in one man, subject in whole or in part to the control and co-operation of others, in the capacity of counselors to him.” Id., No. 70, at 424. But that is precisely what would occur if the President’s so-called assistants could exercise his power against his wishes. Only if the President’s deputies were removable at will would they truly be “subordinate” to “the sole executive magistrate.” See id., No. 47, at 303 (J. Madison). And only then could the Constitution live up to James Iredell’s boast that “the President” would “be personally responsible for everything.” Answers to Mr. Mason’s Objections to the New Constitution (1788), in Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States 348 (P. Ford ed. 1888); see also 1 Writings of James Monroe 331 (S. Hamilton ed. 1898) (“I would repose the whole trust of this department in one officer, so he alone should be responsible for all its transactions”). Text and structure thus both taught that the President had to be able to remove those who fail to live up to their duties, lest he fail to live up to his.

 This aspect of the President’s role was confirmed in the Constitution’s first year—and in the years that followed. The result was a “regular course of practice” that “liquidate[d] & settle[d]” the President’s power of removal, 8 Writings of James Madison 450 (G. Hunt ed. 1908), a construction followed by every branch of “the Genl. Govt, . . . thro all the vicissitudes of Party,” 9 id., at 333 (1910). See also The Federalist No. 37, at 228–229 (J. Madison).

 That practice began in the First Congress. When it first met in 1789, one of its first and most pressing tasks was to establish the first executive departments—and with them the first “Heads of Departments.” Art. II, §2, cl. 2. In doing so, it debated how those officers should be removed. Some felt that the Senate had to consent to all removals, as one  of the two entities that “appoint[ed]” the official in the first place. 1 Annals of Cong. 472–473 (Rep. Gerry). Others argued that the Constitution was silent on the question, giving Congress the “right” to select whether an officer may be removed, and if so by whom—“the President, the President and Senate, or the Legislature, or any other person whom they might introduce into office, merely for that particular purpose.” Id., at 521 (Rep. Sedgwick). And a third group contended that removal was part of “the Executive power” vested in the President, which “the Legislature has no right to diminish or modify.” Id., at 463 (Rep. Madison).

 By this point, the arguments made by the third group will sound familiar. Madison led the charge. “I conceive that if any power whatsoever is in its nature Executive,” and thus vested in the President, “it is the power of appointing, overseeing, and controlling those who execute the laws.” Ibid. And if that is so, he explained, then the “power of removal from office” must follow. Id., at 499. For it is only with that power that “the chain of dependence [can] be preserved”—“the lowest officers, the middle grade, and the highest” made to “depend, as they ought, on the President, and the President on the community.” Ibid. Others agreed. Some focused on text. “[T]he power of removal [is] an Executive power,” Representative George Clymer said, “and as such belong[s] to the President alone, by the express words of the Constitution.” Id., at 382. Others focused on structure. “The Constitution places all Executive power in the hands of the President,” Representative Fisher Ames explained, “and could he personally execute all the laws, there would be no occasion for establishing auxiliaries.” Id., at 474. “But in order that he may be responsible to his country,” he continued, “he must have a choice in selecting his assistants, a control over them, with power to remove them when he finds the qualifications which induced their appointment cease to exist.” Ibid.

  The third group emerged victorious. They successfully convinced the House of Representatives to delete a clause in the draft bill that said that the Secretary of Foreign Affairs was “to be removable by the President,” for such language would “ha[ve] the appearance of conferring the power upon him” when in fact it was his all along. Id., at 505, 507 (Rep. Benson). What they favored instead—and what they got—was a new clause that assumed “the power of removal to be in the President,” so as to “establish a legislative construction of the Constitution.” Id., at 578 (Rep. Benson). The bill as amended passed the House, and then the Senate, a feat that was repeated first with laws establishing the Department of War and then again with the Treasury. These statutes thus “implicitly endorsed the view that the President had a constitutional power to remove executive officers.” A. Bamzai & S. Prakash, The Executive Power of Removal, 136 Harv. L. Rev. 1756, 1793 (2023) (Bamzai & Prakash).

 Congress’s confirmation of the President’s power quickly took hold—and even gained fame as “the Decision of 1789.” “After very long debates,” Madison wrote to Jefferson, Congress had endorsed the view that “the Executive function of removal” was “vested in the President,” a decision “most consonant to the text of the Constitution” and “to the requisite responsibility and harmony in the Executive Department.” 16 Documentary History of the First Federal Congress 893 (C. Bickford, K. Bowling, H. Veit, & W. diGiacomantonio eds. 2004). Even those who opposed Congress’s decision recognized that the decision had been made. Take Representative Richard Bland Lee, who had argued that the question of who may remove officers was up to “[t]he Legislature,” as it could “create and establish offices” as it saw fit. 1 Annals of Cong. 525. After the bills had been enacted, Lee wrote that it “was determined in the affirmative” that the President “had, or ought to have, from a fair Construction of the constitution,” the power to remove  his own appointees. 16 Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, at 866–867. And even those far removed from the debates saw the issue as settled, including Chief Justice Marshall, see 5 J. Marshall, The Life of George Washington 199–200 (1807) (Marshall) (the decision was “a full expression of the sense of the legislature”), Chancellor Kent, see 1 J. Kent, Commentaries on American Law 289–290 (1826) (the decision “firmly and definitively settled” the matter), and Justice Story, 3 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States §1537, p. 395 (1833) (Story) (expressing doubts about the decision from first principles, but noting that “[t]he public . . . acquiesced in this decision” and that it “has not been questioned on many other occasions”).

 Early Presidents of all persuasions, too, hewed to the Decision of 1789. Washington saw it as his “indispensable duty” to remove officers who failed to live up to his expectations. 36 Writings of George Washington 216 (1941). His Cabinet agreed, taking the stance that the ability to “remove from office” was “an essential attribute of Executive Power.” 20 Papers of George Washington: Presidential Series 355, 357, n. 2 (D. Hoth & W. Ferraro eds. 2019). The first President Adams said the same. See 20 Papers of John Adams 150–151 (S. Georgini et al. eds. 2020) (noting his support for “the President[’s] Power of Removal, according to the Constitution”). So did Jefferson. See 4 Papers of Thomas Jefferson, at 281 (the power to “remov[e] executive officers [is] inherent in [the] Executive”). So did Madison. See 2 Papers of James Madison 192 (D. Mattern, J. Stagg, M. Johnson, & A. Colony eds. 2013) (one of the “[c]onstitutional attributes of the Executive” is to determine “[t]he tenure of the office” of subordinates). So did Monroe, along with the second President Adams. 7 Memoirs of John Quincy Adams 424–425 (C. Adams ed. 1875) (citing Monroe for the view that “the tenure of all subordinate executive Offices” is “necessarily the pleasure of the chief by whom  they were commissioned,” and agreeing with “the principle established by Mr Monroe”).

 And so did Jackson—much to Congress’s dismay. Unlike his predecessors, who (except for Jefferson) utilized their removal power sparingly, Jackson fired hundreds “of subordinates for personal and partisan reasons.” L. White, The Jacksonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1829–1861, p. 33 (1954) (White); see also id., at 307–308. But even Jackson’s most vehement critics acknowledged that he had the power to do as he pleased. “I consider it . . . a settled point,” Senator Daniel Webster said, “settled by construction, settled by precedent, settled by the practice of the Government, and settled by statute.” 11 Cong. Deb. 461 (1835). When Webster tried to unsettle the Decision of 1789 through new legislation, the effort failed, only further cementing the President’s power. See White 41–44. As Webster—still in the Senate—put it 15 years later:

“[S]ince the practice has become a settled practice, since every Administration has indulged in it, and since it must now be considered, as the legal construction of the Constitution, . . . it follows . . . that this power, thus legally vested in the President, must be exercised by him as independently of our control as any other power that is to be exercised by him under the Constitution.” Cong. Globe, 31st Cong., 1st Sess., 1126 (1850).

 Twice in the 19th century, we reaffirmed what the First Congress had held. The text of the Constitution “is silent with respect to the power of removal from office,” we noted  in our first case on the subject. Ex parte Hennen, 13 Pet. 230, 258 (1839). But “it was very early adopted, as the practical construction of the Constitution,” that the power “to remove, where the tenure of the office was not fixed by the Constitution,” was “vested in the President alone.” Id., at 259. “And such would appear to have been the legislative construction of the Constitution” too, given “the organization of the three great departments” “in the year 1789.” Ibid. Our second case was of a piece. “[T]he decision of Congress in 1789, and the universal practice of the Government under it,” we explained, “ha[s] settled the question beyond any power of alteration.” Parsons v. United States, 167 U. S. 324, 330 (1897).

 Our landmark decision, however, came 100 years ago in Myers v. United States, 272 U. S. 52. That case arose from an unlikely source—a dispute over management of the post office in Portland, Oregon. See id., at 106. Under an 1876 statute, the President had to receive the “advice and consent of the Senate” not only to appoint postmasters but also to remove them. §6, 19 Stat. 80. For reasons that are now lost to history, President Wilson fired Portland’s postmaster, Frank Myers, and did so without the Senate’s consent. 272 U. S., at 106–107. Myers sued for backpay. See id., at 106.

 In a scholarly opinion, Chief Justice Taft rejected Myers’s suit and reaffirmed the President’s power to fire his subordinates at will. That power arose, he wrote for the Court, from the Constitution’s text, history, and structure, just as the First Congress had held in 1789. See id., at 136. “The vesting of the executive power in the President was essentially a grant of the power to execute the laws,” Chief Justice Taft explained. Id., at 117. “As he is charged specifically to take care that [the laws] be faithfully executed, the reasonable implication,” he continued, “was that as part of his executive power” he must be able to “remov[e] those for whom he can not continue to be responsible.” Ibid. “Mr.  Madison and his associates” made this same point, the Chief Justice noted, and they “dwelt at length upon the necessity there was for construing Article II to give the President the sole power of removal in his responsibility for the conduct of the executive branch.” Ibid.

 But Chief Justice Taft emphasized that it was not just the First Congress that had come to this conclusion. The First Congress supplied “a precedent upon which many future laws . . . would be based”—and if it had erred, the next Congresses would have “dissent[ed] and depart[ed]” from its view. Id., at 136. Quite the opposite occurred, the Chief Justice explained. The Decision of 1789 “was soon accepted as a final decision of the question by all branches of the Government.” Ibid. For “74 years, there was no act of Congress, no executive act, and no decision of this Court at variance with the declaration of the First Congress.” Id., at 163.

 In the wake of the Civil War, Chief Justice Taft noted, Congress sought to “reverse this constitutional construction”—but in the end only confirmed it. Id., at 164. “This reversal grew out of the serious political differences” between President Johnson—a Jacksonian Democrat—and congressional Republicans, who boasted “a two-thirds majority” in both Houses of Congress. Id., at 165. Over Johnson’s veto, Congress sought to “curtail the then acknowledged powers of the President” with the Tenure of Office Act, which required him to receive the Senate’s consent before firing most officers. Id., at 165–166.

 “[T]he injury and invalidity” of the law was “immediately recognized by the Executive and objected to”—and not just by Johnson. Id., at 167. “General Grant, succeeding Mr. Johnson in the Presidency”—and no fan of Johnson or his program—“earnestly recommended in his first message the total repeal” of the law. Id., at 167–168. “What faith can an Executive put in officials forced upon him?” Grant asked. Id., at 168. “How will such officials be likely to serve an  Administration which they know does not trust them?” Ibid. Despite Grant’s efforts, “[t]he feeling growing out of the controversy with President Johnson retained the act on the statute book”—and led to one other such law, the one for postmasters at issue in that very case—“until 1887,” when the Tenure in Office Act was repealed. Ibid.

 What these events revealed, Chief Justice Taft wrote, was not Presidential “acquiescence” but resistance, a consistent rejection of “the validity of such legislation” as incompatible with “the legislative action of 1789.” Id., at 172–173. At issue in Myers, then, as the Chief Justice saw it, was whether “to set aside” the First Congress’s “construction, thus buttressed, and adopt an adverse view,” contrary to the Constitution’s text, history, and structure. Id., at 175. The Court refused to do so. It hewed instead to the “constitutional construction . . . reached by the First Congress of the United States . . . and acquiesced in by the whole Government for three-quarters of a century.” Id., at 176. Any law to the contrary, the Court concluded, was “in violation of the Constitution, and invalid.” Ibid.

 While Myers was perhaps our best word on the subject, it was not our last.

 This case should have begun and ended with this Court’s unanimous decision from almost a century ago: Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U. S. 602. Humphrey’s addressed the very statute at issue here, which allows the President to remove FTC Commissioners only “ ‘for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,’ ” and upheld its constitutionality against the very same challenge levied in this case. Id., at 620; see id., at 629, 631–632.

 In reaching that conclusion, the Court focused on the FTC’s “character.” Id., at 629, 631. The FTC, the Court explained, is a “body of experts” tasked with “carry[ing] into effect legislative policies embodied in the [FTC Act] in accordance with the legislative standard therein prescribed,” including by determining what constitutes “ ‘unfair methods of competition.’ ” Id., at 624, 628. The agency thus was not purely executive; instead, it “act[ed] in part quasi-legislatively and in part quasi-judicially” by “filling in and administering the details embodied [in the law’s] general standard.” Id., at 628. “[F]rom the very nature of its duties,” it was clear that the FTC “must . . . act with entire impartiality,” as “[i]t is charged with the enforcement of no policy except the policy of the law.” Id., at 624; see id., at 625 (relying on legislative history emphasizing the “advantage” to be found in the FTC’s “independence” and immunity from “suspicion of partisan direction”).

 For an agency of this “character,” the Court held that Congress permissibly could forbid Presidential “removal except for cause.” Id., at 631–632. Given the FTC’s role in “carrying into operation” Congress’s legislative goals, it needed some independence from Presidential domination. Id., at 630. It was “quite evident” to the Court, moreover, “that one who holds his office only during the pleasure of another . . . cannot be depended upon to maintain an attitude of independence against the latter’s will.” Id., at 629. Indeed, the Court explained, James Madison had suggested much the same thing when discussing the office of the Comptroller of the Treasury in 1789. See id., at 631 (citing 1 Annals of Cong. 611–612 (1789)). For executive officers whose duties “partak[e] strongly of the judicial character,” Madison explained, “there may be strong reasons why an officer of this kind should not hold his office at the pleasure of the Executive branch.” 1 Annals of Cong. 612. For the FTC too, the Court held, removal protections complied with the Constitution. Humphrey’s, 295 U. S., at 631–632.

 As Congress constructed a variety of agencies to serve the public’s needs over the decades that followed, see infra, at 10–11, this Court repeatedly applied and expanded the rule announced in Humphrey’s. In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579 (1952), Humphrey’s was the only example Justice Jackson provided of a case in which the President’s “power [wa]s at its lowest ebb” and the President was thus prevented from “tak[ing] measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress.” 343 U. S., at 637–638, and n. 4 (concurring opinion). Later, in Wiener v. United States, 357 U. S. 349 (1958), Justice Frankfurter’s opinion for a unanimous Court relied on Humphrey’s (describing it as a “cause célèbre”) to approve removal protections for the War Claims Commission, which settled claims by American prisoners of war and civil internees who suffered harm during World War II. 357 U. S., at 350, 353, 356. The Court explained that “the essence of the decision in Humphrey’s case” was that certain Government officials, depending on their “function,” require and may be given independence “ ‘to exercise [their] judgment without the leave or hindrance of any other official.’ ” Id., at 353 (quoting Humphrey’s, 295 U. S., at 625–626).

  In later decades, the Court reaffirmed Humphrey’s rule that certain executive officers may enjoy for-cause protections. In Morrison v. Olson, 487 U. S. 654 (1988), Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing for a 7-to-1 Court, applied and expanded Humphrey’s in a new context, approving removal protections for an independent counsel tasked with investigating allegations of crime by high executive officers. 487 U. S., at 688–691. Rejecting the idea that the only officers who could permissibly be granted removal protections were those who exercised “ ‘quasi-legislative’ ” or “ ‘quasi-judicial’ powers,” the Court held that the more fundamental question was whether removal protections unduly “interfere[d] with the President’s exercise of the ‘executive power.’ ” Id., at 688–690. Still, the Court explained, Humphrey’s “analysis of the functions served by the officials at issue” remains “[r]elevant” to answering that question. 487 U. S., at 691. Considering the “functions of the” independent counsel, alongside the President’s remaining ability to exercise control over the office, the Court held that the for-cause removal statute at issue was constitutional. Id., at 691–692.

 Even in more recent cases in which the Court has declined to “extend Humphrey’s to a ‘new situation,’ ” ante, at 20, the Court has underscored that Humphrey’s remains good law in its core application to multimember bodies like the FTC, see Seila Law, 591 U. S., at 215–218; Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Bd., 561 U. S. 477, 483 (2010). In Seila Law, for instance, the Court held that removal protections were incompatible with an agency headed by a single director (rather than a multimember commission). 591 U. S., at 218–219. Even so, the principal opinion explicitly suggested that Congress could fix that problem by “converting” the single-headed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with all of the powers it possessed, “into a multimember agency” just like the FTC that Humphrey’s had addressed. 591 U. S., at 237 (opinion of Roberts, C. J., joined by Alito and Kavanaugh, JJ.).

 Searching for a distinction, the Government (echoed by the majority) contends that Humphrey’s should not control as to the present-day FTC because the FTC’s powers have expanded over the years since Humphrey’s was decided. See Brief for Petitioners 25–28; ante, at 25–27. The premise that the FTC has fundamentally changed, however, is untrue: Contrary to the Government’s assertions, the FTC of 1935, like today’s FTC, had the power to conduct investigations, make rules, and bring enforcement actions. See Federal Trade Commission Act, 38 Stat. 719–723.² To the extent the FTC has gained power since 1914 (for example, the Government cites its ability to seek civil penalties, see Brief for Petitioners 25–26), those changes at the margins do not so transform the “character of the office” as to bring the agency outside of Humphrey’s rule. 295 U. S., at 631. If, it was true that the political branches went too far in assigning certain powers to the FTC over the years, moreover, it is unclear why the appropriate remedy at this point would not be to sever these additional, objectionable powers. Cf. United States v. Arthrex, Inc., 594 U. S. 1, 24–25 (2021) (opinion of Roberts, C. J.) (remedying Appointments Clause violation by altering the officers’ powers); see also id., at 44 (Breyer, J., concurring in judgment in part and  dissenting in part) (joining this remedial holding). There then would be no need to adopt a sweeping new rule that will transform the balance of power across the Federal Government and deprive the public of Government impartiality in serving the public’s needs. See infra, at 35–38.

 Far from the minimal impact that the majority imagines Humphrey’s to have had, ante, at 18–21, Humphrey’s has sat at the center of this Court’s separation-of-powers jurisprudence for nearly a century. If precedent were any guide, this case would be open and shut: The FTC’s removal protections, as the Court has long held and repeatedly recognized, are constitutional.³

 Humphrey’s is not just a longstanding precedent of this Court. It also reflects a “deeply rooted tradition” embraced by all three branches of Government and the American people. PHH Corp. v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 881 F. 3d 75, 177 (CADC 2018) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting).

 Such “longstanding practice” is entitled to “ ‘great weight’ ” in separation-of-powers cases like this one. Trump v. Mazars USA, LLP, 591 U. S. 848, 862 (2020). On “doubtful question[s]” regarding the meaning of the Constitution, historical practice, when “deliberately established” through “legislative acts,” can “put at rest” the Constitution’s meaning. McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 401 (1819); see ante, at 9. That is so even for practices that “began after the founding era.” NLRB v. Noel Canning, 573 U. S. 513, 525 (2014).⁴ As Justice Scalia explained, constitutional  interpretation should reflect “the principles adhered to, over time, by the American people, rather than those favored by the personal (and necessarily shifting) philosophical dispositions of a majority of this Court.” Rutan v. Republican Party of Ill., 497 U. S. 62, 96 (1990) (dissenting opinion). Like a “more democratic” form of stare decisis, respecting historical practice “promotes . . . stability, equality, and predictability.” M. McConnell, Time, Institutions, and Interpretation, 95 B. U. L. Rev. 1745, 1776 (2015).

 These principles apply with full force here. Today’s decision addresses one of the oldest, most vigorously debated questions in constitutional law. See infra, at 18–24. Fifty years before Humphrey’s was decided, Congress and the President began to reach a settled answer to that question, at least as to multimember agencies like the FTC. In 1887, as the railroads grew in strength across the American economy, Congress responded by creating the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), a powerful new agency with five Commissioners, appointed by the President by and with the consent of the Senate, who were removable only “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Act of Feb. 4, 1887, 24 Stat. 383. Three years later, Congress established the nine-member Board of General Appraisers to regulate American customs and granted it the same form of removal protection. Act of June 10, 1890, 26 Stat. 136; see A. Bamzai, Taft, Frankfurter, and the First Presidential For-Cause Removal, 52 U. Rich. L. Rev. 691, 694–695 (2018) (describing this Board as “one of the most powerful entities within the federal government” at the time). The  Federal Reserve Board followed with similar removal protections in 1913. Act of Dec. 23, 1913, 38 Stat. 260–261. The next year, Congress created the FTC with removal protections aimed at ensuring “a continuous policy,” “free from the effect of . . . changing [White House] incumbency.” 51 Cong. Rec. 10376 (1914).

 From here, “many more . . . for-cause removal provisions followed.” Seila Law, 591 U. S., at 275–276 (opinion of Kagan, J.). Today, dozens of agencies are headed by commissioners or board members removable only for cause. Id., at 276; see J. Manners & L. Menand, The Three Permissions: Presidential Removal and the Statutory Limits of Agency Independence, 121 Colum. L. Rev. 1, 74–79 (2021) (Manners & Menand) (collecting additional agencies). Thus, unlike in other recent cases, in which the Court considered agencies that it deemed “historical anomal[ies]” with “no foothold in history or tradition,” here history and tradition point in the opposite direction. Seila Law, 591 U. S., at 222; see Free Enterprise Fund, 561 U. S., at 505.

 Congress, moreover, has taken this action not only with the Executive Branch’s “acquiesce[nce],” but also with the active participation of Presidents across the ideological spectrum. Zivotofsky v. Kerry, 576 U. S. 1, 23 (2015); see also, e.g., United States v. Midwest Oil Co., 236 U. S. 459, 473 (1915) (endorsing the “wise and quieting rule that in determining . . . the existence of a power, weight shall be given to the usage itself—even when the validity of the practice is the subject of investigation”). President Lincoln, even before the creation of the ICC in 1887, “asked Congress to establish” a Comptroller of the Currency and then signed the bill enacting that office into law even though it restricted the President’s power to remove the Comptroller. Seila Law, 591 U. S., at 274 (opinion of Kagan, J.).5 In fact, other than Humphrey’s own removal, the Government struggles to find any Presidential objections to, let alone repudiations of, for-cause removal protections like the FTC’s since they came into existence in the late 1800s. See Reply Brief 10–11 (noting one Presidential signing statement “questioning” removal protections but still signing them into law). Even if Humphrey’s had never been decided, this longstanding practice, jointly undertaken by Congresses and Presidents, should be entitled to significant weight.

 The majority’s only response is INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S. 919 (1983), which held unconstitutional a 50-year-old procedure by which a single House of Congress could override an executive action. See ante, at 33. Chadha, however, is no model for today’s decision. For one thing, Chadha did not involve a practice that had been repeatedly approved by this Court for nearly a century. Moreover, Chadha rested on “[e]xplicit and unambiguous provisions of the Constitution” (specifically, Article I’s bicameralism and presentment requirements) in disapproving the challenged practice. 462 U. S., at 945. The majority here, by contrast, identifies no constitutional provision referencing or requiring an unfettered removal power. See infra, at 14–18. Instead, it rests heavily on structural inferences, legislative inaction, congressional debates, legal commentary, and private correspondence. See ante, at 9–13. Thus, unlike Chadha, this case does not ask whether 50 years of practice can overcome plain constitutional text. It asks whether the Constitution privileges the majority’s flawed historical account as the final word on the subject, impervious to more than a century of later historical development.

  The answer is no. Although the majority suggests that its view reflects a settled construction of the Constitution, the opposite is true. For more than a century, the Nation has firmly rejected the majority’s view and has recognized that Congress, not this Court, has primary say over whether multimember commissions like the FTC should have some insulation from direct Presidential control. It is thus the majority, not Humphrey’s or the FTC, that improperly “transform[s] the ‘established practice’ of the political branches.” Mazars, 591 U. S., at 867.

 Beginning at the founding, there is no evidence that those who shaped or ratified the Constitution adopted the majority’s general rule of at-will removal. Indeed, the Court has long noted that, for the most part, “[t]he Constitution is silent with respect to the power of removal from office, where the tenure is not fixed.” Ex parte Hennen, 13 Pet. 230, 258 (1839). The one exception, and only explicit removal power granted in the Constitution, is for impeachment of the “President, Vice President, and all Civil Officers,” a power placed in Congress’s hands, not the President’s. See Art. I, §3, cls. 6–7; Art. II, §4.

 Still, the majority begins by claiming that its theory of Presidential removal comes from Article II’s “vest[ing of] ‘[t]he executive Power’ ” in the President. Ante, at 1, 4 (quoting Art. II, §1, cl. 1). That assertion begs the question. Does the “executive Power,” in fact, contain an illimitable removal power beyond Congress’s power to “establis[h] by Law” certain offices, as “necessary and proper” to structure the Executive Branch? Art. I, §8, cl. 18; Art. II, §2, cl. 2. After all, agencies like the FTC would not even exist if not for Congress’s exercise of its Article I power to create them.

 There is little to suggest that “executive Power,” as understood at the time of the founding, was as capacious as the Court today asserts. The powers held by the English Crown and state governors before ratification did not include a removal power that the legislature could not modify. Instead, Parliament often restricted the Crown’s ability to remove even high-level royal officers, and States with vesting clauses like the Constitution’s similarly allowed for limits on gubernatorial removal powers. See Seila Law, 591  U. S., at 267–268 (opinion of Kagan, J.). Recent, post-Seila Law scholarship overwhelmingly confirms this point.⁶

 Nor is there evidence that the Constitution was intended to give the President more expansive removal powers than those enjoyed by the Crown. For good reason: Doing so would have been inconsistent with the Constitution’s very foundation. The Framers “never intended” to give the President “the complete set of powers” that the English Crown held, let alone more. C. Chabot, Interring the Unitary Executive, 98 Notre Dame L. Rev. 129, 140 (2022) (Chabot). They carefully parsed the “ ‘royal prerogative[s]’ ” and assigned many, including the power of office creation, to Congress. Ibid.; see G. Lawson, Command and Control: Operationalizing the Unitary Executive, 92 Ford. L. Rev. 441, 442–443 (2023) (Lawson) (explaining that the Constitution’s vesting of the power to create offices in Congress was a “monumental change from English practice”).

 Removal also “was not discussed in the Constitutional Convention,” Myers v. United States, 272 U. S. 52, 109–110 (1926), making an expansion of preratification executive power unlikely. Alexander Hamilton, then writing to support the States’ ratification of the Constitution, explained that because the power to remove traditionally followed the power to appoint, “[t]he consent of [the Senate] would be necessary to displace as well as to appoint.” The Federalist No. 77, p. 458 (C. Rossiter & C. Kesler eds. 1999). This was a selling point for the Constitution, as it meant that “[a] change of the [President] would not occasion so violent or so  general a revolution in the officers of the government as might be expected if he were the sole disposer of offices.” Ibid.⁷ Madison also explained that “[t]he tenure of the ministerial offices, generally, will be a subject of legal regulation, conformably to the reason of the case and the example of the State constitutions.” Id., No. 39, at 238.

 The Constitution may have been intended, as the majority argues at length, to “forg[e] a new path,” in contrast to some state governments at the time, by “opting for one President” and not a “ ‘committee-style’ ” Presidency. See ante, at 1–2, 4–9. This new path, however, does not lead where the majority wishes to go. Whether executive power vests in a single President or a council, the question remains whether the Vesting Clause forecloses any limitations on that person’s (or body’s) power to remove subordinate officials. For proof, look no further than Hamilton, who certainly agreed that executive power ought to be “placed in a ‘single hand.’ ” Ante, at 6 (quoting The  Federalist No. 70, p. 424 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961)). Yet Hamilton also saw this choice as entirely compatible with his view that “[t]he consent of ” the Senate would be necessary “to displace as well as to appoint” officers. The Federalist No. 77, at 458 (Rossiter & Kessler eds. 1999). He plainly did not view “the power to remove at will [a]s a necessary corollary of the Constitution’s design,” ante, at 8, and the majority is wrong to assume that a unitary Presidency implies an unlimited removal power.

 The majority relatedly places undue weight on the notion that “ ‘[t]he power of appointing and removing executive officers [is] inherent in [the] Executive.’ ” Ibid. Under the Constitution, the President does not have unlimited appointment powers either. His power is to “nominate”; only “by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate” may he “appoint” the “Officers of the United States.” Art. II, §2, cl. 2. What is more, the President can appoint officers only to offices “established by Law”—that is, by Congress. Ibid. Any link between appointment and removal thus undermines the existence of any inherent illimitable executive removal power. See, e.g., Lawson 452–453. Given that the Constitution did not grant the President alone an illimitable power to appoint, it is all the less likely that it silently vested in the President an unbounded power to remove.

 Nor does the Take Care Clause serve as a plausible source for the expansive removal power the majority posits. Contra, ante, at 4. “[T]he provision—‘he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed’—speaks of duty, not power.” Seila Law, 591 U. S., at 268 (opinion of Kagan, J.) (quoting Art. II, §3). As recent scholarship has explained, “ ‘[f]aithful execution’ was proto-fiduciary legal language from centuries of English law that limited the discretion of executive officials” and did “not expan[d] their power.” J. Shugerman, The Misuse of Ratification-Era Sources by Unitary Executive Theorists, 58 U. Mich. J. L. Reform 591, 603–604 (2025); see A. Kent, E. Leib, & J. Shugerman,  Faithful Execution and Article II, 132 Harv. L. Rev. 2111, 2120 (2019) (explaining that the original public meaning of the Take Care Clause “supports readings of Article II that tend to subordinate presidential power to congressional direction”). At-will removal might be one good way of fulfilling those duties. There is no evidence, however, that anyone understood the Take Care Clause at or near the founding to imply a mandatory, inflexible rule of at-will removal that Congress could never modify.

 In sum, nothing in the text of the Constitution, as understood at the time of the founding by those who ratified it, suggests the illimitable removal power the Court today endorses. The majority can shut its eyes to this evidence and point back to its past mistakes as support for the new ones of today. See ante, at 20 (citing Seila Law and Free Enterprise Fund). To the extent “ ‘[o]riginal history’ ” is seen as “generally dispositive,” however, see United States v. Rahimi, 602 U. S. 680, 738 (2024) (Barrett, J., concurring), this background should have prevented the Court from continuing to build on the uncertain foundation of a general rule of illimitable Presidential removal.

 The majority quibbles with some of the evidence discussed above, but in the end cites nothing from the ratification debates or the Constitution’s text endorsing its view of unbounded removal power. Instead, the majority rests mostly on postratification commentary and congressional inaction. On this score, though, the majority also comes up short. Presidential removal has long evoked strong, conflicting views from American political leaders, but the available evidence from 1789 through the end of the 19th century reflects that the political branches have long believed, and acted upon the belief, that Congress has the power to set limits on the President’s removal authority and that the President was not free to flout such limits when enacted.

 Even before Humphrey’s, the Court’s precedents likewise made clear that it is the majority’s radical theory of unitary executive power, not the sustained practice of the political branches over the centuries, that is out of step with traditional notions of separation of powers in this country.

 No case before the turn of the 20th century suggested that the President’s removal power was not regulable by Congress. In Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803), Chief Justice Marshall approvingly recognized that an office with a 5-year fixed-term tenure was “not removable at the will of the executive” and thus was “independent of the  executive.” Id., at 162, 172. That protection meant that, “having once made [a fixed-term] appointment, [the President’s] power over the office [was] terminated in all cases.” Id., at 162. Indeed, the historic dispute in that case, over whether Marbury had been commissioned to his office as a justice of the peace, would have been academic if President Jefferson could have removed Marbury at pleasure once commissioned. It mattered only if Marbury, at that point, was safe from removal.¹³

 The majority cites Hennen, 13 Pet. 230, which in 1839 addressed a territorial court’s power to remove a clerk of that court. Id., at 258. In discussing background removal principles supporting such power, Hennen recognized that the power to remove Presidential appointees was generally “vested in the President alone,” i.e., “the concurrence of the Senate” was not required. Id., at 259. It also made clear, however, that the tenure of offices could vary if “limited by law.” Ibid. A case the majority ignores, United States v. Perkins, 116 U. S. 483 (1886), held that Congress “ ‘no doubt’ ” may “ ‘limit and restrict the power of removal’ ” as to inferior officers and expressly left open the question whether Congress may do the same as to principal officers. Id., at 484–485. The majority also cites Parsons v. United States, 167 U. S. 324 (1897), which addressed whether Congress had, in fact, granted a district attorney an unremovable tenure in office. Id., at 342–343. Parsons carries little weight here because the Court there construed the statute at issue “to concede to the President the power of removal,” id., at 343, making it “unnecessary” to decide any “question of constitutional power” regarding removals, id., at 335. In short, the 19th century closed with no judicial endorsement of an illimitable removal power.

  That brings us to Myers, authored by former-President and then-Chief Justice Taft. If Myers is the “best” support for the majority’s position, ante, at 16, its theory is a castle built on sand. For one thing, as the majority admits, Myers did not address for-cause removal protection; the challenged statute instead required Senate consent to removal. See ante, at 14. Thus, despite the grand pretentions of the opinion, it decided no more than that the President could “remove a postmaster of the first class, without the advice and consent of the Senate.” Humphrey’s, 295 U. S., at 626.

 Even in doing so, Myers managed to get a great many things wrong. Its expansive reading of Article II lacked any mooring in text or preratification history, conceding the lack of any “express provision respecting removals in the Constitution” or “discuss[ion] in the Constitutional Convention” and instead leaping to the Decision of 1789. 272 U. S., at 109–111. Further, “[m]ost contemporary scholars agree that Taft’s account of the Decision of 1789 is tendentious and historically inaccurate”; in Myers’s own time, moreover, “scholars and jurists attacked its historical arguments.” A. Katz & N. Rosenblum, Becoming the Administrator-in-Chief, 123 Colum. L. Rev. 2153, 2239, and nn. 642–643 (2023) (collecting sources). In addition, Myers’s claim that there was “no act of Congress . . . at variance” with its view of an illimitable removal power for the Nation’s first 74 years, see 272 U. S., at 163, is at best incomplete, see supra, at 24–27. That is not to mention the Myers dissenters (Justices Holmes, Brandeis, and McReynolds), who demonstrated at great length the majority’s many other errors. See 272 U. S., at 177–295.

 Perhaps for those reasons, and despite the majority’s contrary presentation, it is Myers that had little impact when it was decided and has only waned in influence since. Within a decade, and with four Justices from the Myers majority still on the Court, the Court in Humphrey’s “reexamined the precedents referred to in the Myers case, and  f[ou]nd nothing in them to justify a conclusion contrary to” the one it reached as to the FTC. 295 U. S., at 630. The Court unanimously abandoned Myers’s expansive dicta, approving only “the narrow point actually decided” on the removability of postmasters “without the advice and consent of the Senate.” 295 U. S., at 626. All other statements “out of harmony” with Humphrey’s were “disapproved.” Ibid.

 For decades after that, the Court continued to cabin Myers to its “essence,” explaining that it stands only for the proposition that “Congress [may not] ‘dra[w] to itself ’ ” the power to remove, Morrison, 487 U. S., at 686, and says nothing about provisions merely “limit[ing] the President’s powers of removal,” Bowsher, 478 U. S., at 724. As Justice Frankfurter put it in Wiener, Myers’s “assumption” of “the President’s inherent constitutional power to remove officials, no matter what the relation of the executive to the discharge of their duties and no matter what restrictions Congress may have imposed regarding the nature of their tenure,” was “short-lived.” 357 U. S., at 352. The majority is thus free to complain about the “shabby treatment” Myers has received, ante, at 34, but it has decades of precedent to blame for that, not this dissent. From Humphrey’s to Wiener to Bowsher to Morrison, Myers had been left on the sidelines long before today, at least until the Court reinvigorated a maximalist view of Presidential power a few years ago. Humphrey’s approval of removal protections for agencies like the FTC, to the contrary, has supplied the rule that governed the creation of the modern state over the course of the following century. See supra, at 6–7.

 The majority thus has very little support in text, history, or precedent. What it does have is a theory. As the majority sees things, “the buck stops” with the President, ante, at 4, who holds all executive power and thus can be “ ‘blame[d]’ ” or held “ ‘responsib[le]’ ” for all executive conduct, ante, at  1–2. Yet the President cannot “execute the laws alone and unaided.” Ante, at 4. To ensure that the President can carry out his job and remain responsible for all exercises of executive power, the majority says, his inferiors must “remain accountable to [him].” Ibid. The only way for that accountability to exist, according to the majority, is for “those officers [to] be removable by the President” at will, for any reason or no reason at all. Ibid.

 Responsiveness and responsibility are certainly valuable, but they are not the only values countenanced by our Constitution. Others are the continuity and stability of Government, see, e.g., The Federalist No. 77, at 458 (explaining that limitations on removal would prevent the “violent or . . . general . . . revolution in the officers of the government” at every election), and the impartiality and fair administration of justice, see, e.g., 1 Annals of Cong. 612 (Madison) (arguing that some executive officials with judicial functions “ought to hold . . . office by such a tenure as will make him responsible to the public generally,” not just the President). Depending on the situation, one value or another may be more or less important. Today, the majority places accountability to the President above all else.

 Yet the accountability prized by the majority is not an unalloyed good. From the start, Americans distrusted the “arbitrary authority” that could result from a broad removal power, citing the “baleful influence of the royal prerogative when officers h[e]ld their commission during the pleasure of the Crown.” Id., at 488 (Jackson). Story saw unchecked removal authority as carrying a “monarchical and arbitrary” danger, risking the “conver[sion of] all the officers of the country into the mere tools and creatures of the president.” 3 Story §1533, at 391. He also feared that unrestrained Presidential removal would “deter [those] of high and honourable minds from engaging in the public service.” Ibid. Webster, too, observed the “obvious” risk that such a power would breed “complaisance,” “indiscriminate  support of executive measures,” “pliant subserviancy, and gross adulation” in place of “patriotic labors,” “toils for the public good,” “independence, and public spirit.” 1835 Debates 459; see also Cook, 609 U. S., at ___ (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (slip op., at 2) (arguing that “political influences” can “jeopardize” administrative “efficacy”).

 Balancing all these concerns, and the tradeoffs they entail, has historically fallen to those who know the most about them: the political branches. This Court, on the other hand, has proven itself time and again to be the least competent branch to make these judgments. Consider just one (highly salient) example: the Court’s fixation on removal. As others have explained, a “wealth of features” other than at-will removal in fact determines an agency’s responsiveness to the President. Seila Law, 591 U. S., at 283 (opinion of Kagan, J.); see Free Enterprise Fund, 561 U. S., at 524 (Breyer, J., dissenting). The President often names the Chair. See, e.g., §41. He also, through the White House Office of Management and Budget, can “frequently” use the budget process to “ ‘influence [agencies’] policies.’ ” Seila Law, 591 U. S., at 226; see also Brief for Bipartisan Former Chairs of the Federal Trade Commission as Amici Curiae 14–22 (discussing additional mechanisms). Even with the removal protections the Court today holds unconstitutional, the President can still remove an FTC Commissioner who fails to perform her duties adequately or commits malfeasance in office.

 In sum, agencies like the FTC do enjoy some measure of independence by virtue of removal protections, but they also remain accountable in other ways. No one can seriously doubt, for instance, that the FTC’s priorities shifted between the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. See, e.g., K. Rozga & D. Gossett, Major Leadership and Policy Changes at the FTC, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP (July 14, 2021), https://www.dwt.com/insights/2021/ 07/biden-ftc-archive-antitrust-initiatives (archived at https:  //perma.cc/E24P-48DF) (detailing “potential sea change” and “major policy shifts” at the FTC between administrations). There are also a variety of ways in which the President (and Congress) remain accountable for the conduct of executive officials, even without at-will removal. See, e.g., Arthrex, 594 U. S., at 12 (explaining that the Appointments Clause “guarantees accountability” for poorly performing officers). In no way, then, does the FTC’s structure, in purpose or effect, do away completely with Presidential influence. Instead, Congress’s design (approved by many Presidents over decades) balances that influence with other values equally cognizable under the Constitution. The majority’s rigid, inflexible rule goes badly astray by declaring one side of this balance constitutionally irrelevant.¹⁴

 The majority’s assertion that Humphrey’s has proved unworkable also blinks reality. Ante, at 22–23. As just shown, for over 90 years Congress has legislated, and the Government ably functioned, against the “commonly understood” rule that heads of certain multimember agencies can enjoy modest tenure protections from at-will Presidential removal. Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Co. Accounting Oversight Bd., 537 F. 3d 667, 695 (CADC 2008) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting). These agencies, in short, have become ubiquitous over the last century and a half.

 To be sure, independent agencies are not carbon copies of one another, and there is some variation among their structures. Given the sensitive regulatory interests at stake and Congress’s general flexibility in designing federal offices, that nuance should come as no surprise. By and large, however, these agencies follow a remarkably consistent pattern: multimember commissions, with a chair selected by the President, often with bipartisan membership requirements, sometimes with a background-expertise requirement, and, often, with a restriction permitting removal only  “for cause” or for specified causes. So too do these agencies generally carry out functions like the FTC’s: rulemaking, in-house adjudications, investigations, and occasional enforcement actions in court. In establishing agencies like the FTC, Congress has thus shown little difficulty applying the rule the majority today finds too murky.¹⁵

 Nor has this Court had trouble applying Humphrey’s over the course of the past century. It is true that, at times over those decades, disputes have arisen over the principles at play in Humphrey’s. That is to be expected for any legal doctrine. If anything, however, those disputes have been remarkably few and far between. As to multimember commissions, this Court has returned to the issue only once, making clear that “[t]he philosophy of Humphrey’s” plainly supported protections for members of the War Claims Commission. Wiener, 357 U. S., at 356. The majority claims that this paucity of cases marks a “retrea[t] from Humphrey’s.” Ante, at 22. The reality, however, is that the Court has seldom needed to address these issues because disputes have seldom arisen. That is so even though Congress all the while, and with minimal objection (and no vetoes) from over a dozen Presidents, has constructed the Executive Branch in reliance upon Humphrey’s and its progeny. See supra, at 10–11, 35–38.

  No other decisions of this Court, as to other agency structures, suggest any inability to police the bounds established by Humphrey’s. Contra, ante, at 19–20. In fact, they show the opposite. Morrison accepted and broadened Humphrey’s functionalist approach, clarifying only that the exercise is not meant to “define rigid categories” of officials who exercise executive power or perform executive functions, “but to ensure that Congress does not interfere with the President’s” constitutional duties. Morrison, 487 U. S., at 689–690. As to the officer at issue in Morrison, the Court held that the removal protections left the President with “ample” control. Id., at 692. Free Enterprise Fund recognized Humphrey’s rule, accepted it as to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and held that a second layer of protection for a subsidiary Board (a “novel structure” never considered before) was unconstitutional. 561 U. S., at 496; see id., at 487. Seila Law also took Humphrey’s as a given and held that a different structure (a single-director agency head) was an “almost wholly unprecedented” “historical anomaly” that fell outside Humphrey’s scope. 591 U. S., at 217, 220–223. These conclusions were, to be sure, subject to vigorous disagreement at the time. See, e.g., id., at 269–296 (opinion of Kagan, J.). Far from showing Humphrey’s to be unworkable, however, those cases show how legal precedents work: They extend to some situations, but not to others, and Justices sometimes disagree about where to draw the lines. Whatever its outer limits, Humphrey’s core holding as to the FTC and multimember bodies like it has never proven too difficult for courts to apply.

 The majority points to a handful of recent lower court decisions from the past year or so that purportedly show that “no one knows how to apply Humphrey’s in practice.” Ante, at 22–23. That tumult, though, is more fairly attributed to the Court’s recent emergency-docket abandonment of Humphrey’s. See, e.g., Space Exploration Technologies Corp. v. NLRB, 151 F. 4th 761, 776–777 (CA5 2025); see  also Trump v. Wilcox, 605 U. S. ___, ___ (2025) (Kagan, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 2) (criticizing the majority for using the “emergency docket . . . to overrule or revise existing law”). When the Court fails to adhere to its own precedents in a principled manner, it is hard to expect consistency from the lower courts that must keep up with the Court’s rapidly shifting views. For decades before this Court upended the doctrine, however, Humphrey’s was a stable, easily understood precedent of this Court.

 Last, the majority takes aim at Humphrey’s use of the terms “ ‘quasi-legislative’ ” and “ ‘quasi-judicial.’ ” Ante, at 22. Humphrey’s, however, did not draw these terms from thin air. They were “well-established term[s]-of-art,” recognized by figures from Madison to Taft by the time Humphrey’s was decided. See Brief for Legal Historian N. Rosenblum et al. as Amici Curiae 14; see id., at 4–5, 13, 20–21. Madison, recall, recognized that even executive officers may “partak[e] strongly of the judicial character” and that such officers raise distinct considerations when it comes to removal. 1 Annals of Cong. 612. By the early-19th century, courts, too, were using the term “ ‘quasi-judicial’ to describe the duties of specialist officers whose work bore functional and procedural similarities with that of the judiciary” and the term “quasi-legislative” to refer to functions served by “ ‘subordinate agencies’ ” tasked with filling in the details left open by general laws. Brief for Legal Historian N. Rosenblum et al. as Amici Curiae 10, 15; see id., at 9–11, 15–18 (collecting cases developing these categories); see also B. Baumann & J. Shugerman, Quasi-Judicial: A History and Tradition, 127 Colum. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2026) (manuscript, at 4) (tracing the “deep historical pedigree” of independence for “quasi-judicial” officers). The majority can feign ignorance and deem these terms devoid of meaning, but it cannot change the historical record: Independence has long been associated with, and accepted as to, executive officers who carry out functions like the FTC’s.

  In the end, this Court has not “been forced to clarify the doctrine” in this arena “again and again.” Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U. S. 369, 409 (2024). Nor has Humphrey’s spurred major “confusion and disagreement” in the lower courts, or “generated a long list of Circuit conflicts.” Dobbs, 597 U. S., at 283–284. Instead, the Humphrey’s rule is long established and has been easily applied for decades.

 The case for retaining Humphrey’s becomes even stronger when compared against the majority’s theory, which itself promises to unleash only chaos. With remarkable steadfastness, the majority simply refuses to explain where its theory leads or where it ends. See, e.g., ante, at 27. Although declining to consider the consequences of its decision might make it easier for the majority to cast Humphrey’s aside, it leaves courts, agencies, and Congress with little guidance, and many new questions, on how they are supposed to assess removal questions going forward.

 The majority, for example, suggests that its rule might not apply to adjudicatory agencies, including non-Article III courts like the Tax Court. See ante, at 28. That is welcome news, but why is it so? As the majority explains, it cannot be because such agencies are exercising judicial power. Adjudications by Executive Branch agencies “are exercises of—indeed, under our constitutional structure they must be exercises of—the ‘executive Power.’ ” Arlington v. FCC, 569 U. S. 290, 305, n. 4 (2013); see ante, at 19. Nor, after today, is it obvious that such agencies could safely depend on a precedent like Wiener, which did address an adjudicatory agency but rested squarely on “[t]he philosophy of Humphrey’s.” 357 U. S., at 356.  Still, the majority says, a narrow exception for non-Article III adjudicators might yet survive. If that is true, questions immediately arise: What, exactly, is the “ ‘different set of questions’ ” raised by these agencies? Ante, at 28. Do they depend on such entities’ quasi-judicial functions? How should bodies like the MSPB or NLRB, which are mostly adjudicatory but may also possess some other functions, be treated? See, e.g., Brief for Cathy Harris as Amicus Curiae 3 (distinguishing “legislative courts,” including the MSPB, from the FTC); Brief for Gwynne Wilcox as Amicus Curiae 2 (similar for the NLRB). More questions, which have long been at rest under Humphrey’s, are sure to follow.

 Today’s decision may also have major implications for inferior officers and civil-service employees, which the majority studiously ignores. The Court’s precedents, to date, continue to support removal protections for such individuals. See, e.g., Perkins, 116 U. S., at 484–485 (holding, in 1886, that inferior officers appointed by a department head could be protected against at-will removal). Until today, however, Perkins and Humphrey’s were the “two exceptions to the President’s unrestricted removal power” this Court had recognized. Seila Law, 591 U. S., at 204. With one of those exceptions now wiped away, the majority’s silence on the other one provides cold comfort. Nor is there much in the majority’s logic that supports drawing a line at principal officers. Inferior officers (and likely many employees within the civil service) wield some executive power. Regardless of their rank, if the President cannot have such individuals removed at will, then there is a break in “ ‘the chain of dependence’ ” all the same (which, the majority emphasizes, must reach down all the way to the “ ‘lowest officers’ ”). Ante, at 10. The Government, at least, has the candor not to deny that the “logic” of its position “extends to inferior officers” and, perhaps, career civil servants, too. Tr. of Oral Arg. 23–24. The majority, however, at best consigns these issues to years of future uncertainty and at worst risks the end of the employment protections that apply to members of the civil service.

  Perhaps most strikingly, the Court today also makes clear that, whatever the logic of its decision, there are some ad hoc historical exceptions to its totalizing view of Article II, at least for the Federal Reserve. See ante, at 27–28; Cook, 609 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 22–23). For most agencies, the majority here says, removal protections like the FTC’s make the President’s job “ ‘impossible’ ” and so are unlawful. Ante, at 2. For agencies that follow in the “lineage” of the First and Second Banks of the United States, however, the Court recognizes that the Founders were acutely aware “of the calamities that could arise from even the ‘suspicion’ of political manipulation of monetary policy” and that they therefore “guaranteed [such agencies] independence from Presidential control.” Cook, 609 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 22). As a result, the Court holds, removal protections remain permissible (perhaps even indispensable) for agencies, including the Federal Reserve, that follow in “this tradition.” Ibid.

 As discussed above, this is all partly right. Yes, the Founders did “kn[ow] from experience” that some Government functions “should not be subject to political interference.” Id., at ___–___ (slip op., at 22–23); see supra, at 24–26. Yes, this tradition need not remain “ ‘trapped in amber’ ” while Congress continues to devise new agencies and structures to “manag[e] a vastly more complex economy in a vastly more complex world.” Cook, 609 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 22); see supra, at 26–27. What is unclear is why these principles should be limited only to agencies, like the Federal Reserve, that in some respects influence “monetary policy.” Ante, at 28.

 Even assuming the majority is right that the Federal Reserve’s historical pedigree gives it a special place in the constitutional structure, that just leaves the majority with yet additional workability problems. How close is close enough for a historical analogue of this kind? Does any agency that “influence[s] monetary policy” qualify? Ibid. Is it relevant  that the modern agency, like the Bank of the United States, is “quasi-private”? Wilcox, 605 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 2). What happens if Congress adds new functions beyond the historical baseline? See, e.g., 12 U. S. C. §504 (granting the Federal Reserve authority to secure civil penalties of up to $1 million per day); see also A. Bamzai & A. Nielson, Article II and the Federal Reserve, 109 Cornell L. Rev. 843, 863, 887 (2024) (describing executive powers of the Federal Reserve). In short: When, exactly is our law “ ‘trapped in amber,’ ” and when is it not? See Cook, 609 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 22).

 These line-drawing problems are the inevitable result of the majority’s ruling, yet never arose under Humphrey’s. Today, the majority replaces 90 years of proven, workable practice with a half-baked theory of executive power that is simultaneously all encompassing yet also subject to necessary but undefined exceptions. The one thing that does appear to be clear going forward is that chaos will follow.