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Although it pre-existed the time, Unitary Theory is associated with the presidency of George Bush and Dick Cheney after the 9/11 attacks on the USA. Cheney is said to have seen an opportunity to assert presidential power which he saw a necessary and justified by the constitution.
Unitary executive theory is a theory of United States constitutional law which holds that the President of the United States possesses the power to control the entire executive branch. The doctrine is rooted in Article Two of the United States Constitution, which vests "the executive power" of the United States in the President. Although that general principle is widely accepted, there is disagreement about the strength and scope of the doctrine. It can be said that some favor a "strongly unitary" executive, while others favor a "weakly unitary" executive. The former group argue, for example, that Congress's power to interfere with intra-executive decision-making (such as firing executive branch officials) is limited, and that the President can control policy-making by all executive agencies within the limits set for those agencies by Congress. Still others agree that the Constitution requires a unitary executive, but believe this to be harmful, and propose its abolition by constitutional amendment.
Plural executives on the other hand, exist in several states where, in contrast to unitary executives, executive officers such as lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller, secretary of state, and others, are elected independently of the state's governor. The Executive Branch of the Texan state government is a textbook example of this type of executive structure.
Another type of plural executive, used in Japan, Israel, and Sweden, though not in any US state, is one in which a collegial body composes the executive branch . The UK Cabinet is an example of the collegial executive model.
Donald Trump has a unitary persective on presidential power. Speaking at a conference in Washington DC in July 2019 — just after the publication of the Mueller Report — President Trump both criticised the Mueller investigation and repeated his (false) claim that the report had found ‘no collusion, no obstruction’. The President continued: ‘I have Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.’ Neither was this the first time that Trump had made this claim. Clearly this is a very expansive view of Article II and of presidential power. Indeed, it is an incorrect view of both. Yes, Article II grants the president ‘all executive power’ but that is not the same as total power — ‘do whatever I want’. Article II is the part of the Constitution that also describes many of Congress’ s checks on the president and gives Congress significant oversight powers. ‘It’ s certainly not a grant of unlimited power,’ commented William C. Banks, a law professor at Syracuse University. ‘He’ s not a monarch, he’ s the chief executive, and he’ s bound to uphold the rule of law.’ Trump, of course, is not the first president to take an expansive view of presidential power. But Trump’ s declaration of a state of emergency and his diverting of federal funds to start the building of his much-talked-about border wall between the USA and Mexico was probably the clearest example of the overt expansion of presidential power during 2019.
Does the president have unlimited power to Hire and Fire?
Does the president have unlimited power to Hire and Fire?
In his second term, Trump has sought to expand presidential power, through the use of executive orders and the application of emergency powers. In so doing Trump is developing a method by which presidents have expanded their powers in the past however in this case it is in peace time with the president defining the nature of the emergency real or imagined.
Trump claims the right to hire and fire. No modern president has ever come close to the large-scale personnel purges that we have seen under Mr. Trump, and for good reason: Many of the officials in question are protected by law from being fired at will by the president. Mr. Trump maintains that laws limiting the president’s ability to fire high-level officials are unconstitutional. In making that argument, he is drawing on a series of recent Supreme Court opinions emphasizing the importance of presidential control over subordinate officials and invalidating removal limitations at agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Those recent decisions exist alongside another, older precedent, which, until now, has stood as a bulwark against any president’s ability to lay waste to independent agencies: the Supreme Court’s 1935 opinion in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. In that case, the court concluded that Congress could create expert agencies designed to enjoy a degree of independence from the president and could limit the president’s ability to fire at will the leaders of such agencies.
Lower courts reviewing challenges to Mr. Trump’s firings have concluded that those firings are unlawful under precedent, applying Humphrey’s Executor and leaving to the Supreme Court “the prerogative of overruling its own decisions.”
The Supreme Court’s unitary executive cases, have an expansive vision of presidential powers but haven’t formally overruled Humphrey’s Executor instead they have permitted the firings to stand while the litigation proceeded. They stated explicitly that they were not revisiting that case, which involved an agency, the Federal Trade Commission, whose multimember structure differs from the single-member leadership structure at issue in the court’s recent cases.
The Supreme Court put on hold San Francisco-based U.S. Judge William Alsup's March 13 injunction requiring six federal agencies to reinstate thousands of recently hired probationary employees while litigation challenging the legality of the dismissals continues.
For the time being, (May 2025) The practical effect of the Supreme Court decision will be limited because five agencies covered by San Francisco-based U.S. Judge William Alsup's March 13 injunction- all but the Department of Defense - are defendants in a separate lawsuit in Maryland. In that case, a federal judge also has ordered the administration to reinstate thousands of probationary workers at 18 federal agencies, but only if they live or work in Washington, D.C., or the 19 states that sued over the mass firings. However, the Supreme Court's decision was the latest, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, sided with the Republican president.
However,Thursday, May 22, the U.S. Supreme Court indicated that President Donald Trump does not have the power to fire U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. in Trump v. Gwynne A. Wilcox, the justices wrote, "The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States."
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