Tension in the Unitary Executive: How Taft Constructed the Epochal Opinion of Myers v. United States

Abstract

William H. Taft is the only person ever to have served as both president of the United States and as chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. That unique confluence of roles is evident in Myers v. United States, an “epoch-making” and “landmark”case that Taft considered “one of the important opinions I have ever written.”

The precise question in Myers was “whether under the Constitution the President has the exclusive power of removing executive officers of the United States whom he has appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.” Myers was the first decision in the history of the nation to invalidate a congressional statute on the grounds that it violated an inherent Article II power of the president. It was as if fate itself had reserved Myers until Taft could take his seat at the center of the Court.