How Chief Justice Taft Wrote the Famous Myers Opinion, with Robert Post

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Seila Law v. CFPB, and the upcoming case of Collins v. Mnuchin, return our attention to the Constitution’s allocation of powers among the President and Congress—and to the famous cases nearly a century ago when the Supreme Court tried to grapple with those issues amid the rise of the modern administrative state.

As it happens, Professor Robert Post of the Yale Law School is also thinking back to that era, as he writes the next volume of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States. He gives us a preview in a fascinating and entertaining article for the Journal of Supreme Court History, titled “Tension in the Unitary Executive: How Taft Constructed the Epochal Opinion of Taft v. United States.” (Also available to read at SSRN.)

In this episode, he discusses the case (and some amusing examples of Chief Justice Taft’s voluminous correspondence) with Adam White. Adam previously wrote about Professor Post’s article at the Yale J-Reg’s Notice and Comment blog.