U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. may be signaling support for reversing a key high court precedent in favor of former President Donald Trump, according to former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance. Vance, now a legal analyst for MSNBC, weighed in on Trump’s efforts to expand presidential power and weaken the separation of powers in the federal government.
Writing in her Substack blog, she highlighted Trump’s push to overturn Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a landmark 1930s case that limited the president’s ability to remove certain government officials. “Humphrey’s Executor was the plaintiff in a 1930s court case.
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Mr. Humphrey, a Federal Trade Commissioner, had passed away, and the executor of his will wanted to recover the salary he was due for his work as a commissioner from October 8, 1933, to the time of his death on February 14, 1934,” Vance explained.
“The problem was that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had fired Humphrey, who refused to resign,” she continued. “The issue on appeal was whether the president had the power to fire Humphrey. The Supreme Court ruled that he didn’t.”
Vance argues that Trump is attempting to dismantle this precedent as part of a broader strategy to consolidate executive power. “The Trump administration is in the process of trying to upend the division of power under the Constitution. It is trying to assume congressional power for the executive branch and undercut the legitimacy of the judiciary while exposing individual judges to threats,” she warned.
The critical question now, according to Vance, is whether the Supreme Court will break with its own precedent. “The open question is whether the Supreme Court will reverse its own precedent and sign on to Trump’s view,” she wrote. “What will the Supreme Court do?”
Vance pointed to “ominous signs” in the Court’s ruling last summer, which granted ex-presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution. “That case did not rely on the unitary executive theory, but Chief Justice John Roberts could not help but sing the tune,” she noted.
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Roberts’ opinion described the president as “the only person who alone composes a branch of government,” which Vance interprets as a possible endorsement of Trump’s push for expanded executive authority. “The question is whether precedent will trump politics, or whether a conservative majority on the Supreme Court will continue to turn over the keys to the kingdom to the president,” she concluded.
With Trump seeking to reclaim the presidency and reshape the balance of power, legal experts and political observers will be closely watching how the Supreme Court approaches these fundamental constitutional questions.
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