US Supreme Court is empowering autocracy

When Donald Trump returned to office in January, his flurry of executive actions was not merely a display of political vigour but a deliberate stress test of constitutional limits. By issuing dozens of orders, firing senior officials and dismantling federal agencies, Trump has once again placed the presidency at the centre of America’s democratic experiment. But this time, the Supreme Court seems ready to make his vision of unrestrained executive authority a constitutional reality.

Trump wasted no time showing that he intended to wield presidential power like never before. On his first day back in office, he signed 26 executive orders, four proclamations and 12 presidential memoranda. Since then, the torrent of unilateral actions has not slowed. He has dismissed or forced out thousands of federal employees, including the chair of the US Commission on Civil Rights and board members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He has also moved to eliminate entire agencies such as the Department of Education and the US Agency for International Development.

To some observers, these actions might seem like the impulses of a power-hungry leader driven by ego. But as a political scientist who studies presidential power, I see something more systematic and far-reaching. Trump’s recent behaviour represents the culmination of a decades-long campaign to expand the power of the presidency through a controversial constitutional theory known as the “unitary executive”.

The unitary executive theory took shape in the 1980s among conservative legal thinkers who sought to strengthen presidential control over the federal bureaucracy during Ronald Reagan’s administration. The theory’s premise is both simple and revolutionary: the US Constitution vests all executive power in the president alone.

According to this view, every federal official who performs executive functions — from the FBI director to the head of the Environmental Protection Agency — ultimately serves at the pleasure of the president, who can direct or dismiss them at will. In practice, this means that the president could order the Justice Department to investigate political opponents, as Trump has already attempted to do. It could also allow a president to rewrite or ignore parts of laws through “signing statements”, as George W. Bush did in 2006 to justify interrogation practices that amounted to torture.

The president could even exert direct control over agencies traditionally insulated from political interference, such as the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Consumer Product Safety Commission. And in its most extreme form, the theory suggests that the president possesses inherent authority to wage war without congressional approval.

What began as an abstract legal argument has become a practical political project — and the Supreme Court now appears poised to give it its official blessing.

For much of US history, the courts resisted efforts to centralise too much authority in the presidency. In Kendall v. United States (1838), the Supreme Court ruled that the president could not control the postmaster general’s actions. Nearly a century later, in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), the Court unanimously upheld Congress’s power to limit the president’s ability to dismiss commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission. That decision became a cornerstone of the modern administrative state, ensuring that certain regulatory bodies could function independently of direct political control.

But the Court’s position has shifted. Over the past 15 years, its conservative majority has increasingly endorsed elements of the unitary executive theory. In several cases, it has struck down laws that constrained the president’s ability to remove officials, thereby broadening presidential authority over the executive branch.

In 2020, in Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Court ruled that the bureau’s single-director structure — which shielded the director from being dismissed without cause — was unconstitutional. Justice Clarence Thomas went further in a concurring opinion, calling for the Court to “repudiate” Humphrey’s Executor altogether. That was no idle remark.

Recent cases on the Court’s emergency, or “shadow”, docket suggest that several justices are prepared to go further still. In Trump v. Wilcox, Trump v. Boyle and Trump v. Slaughter, all decided in 2025, the Court upheld Trump’s dismissal of officials from agencies long regarded as independent, including the National Labor Relations Board, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. Previously, these officials were thought to be protected from political dismissal. The Court’s rulings effectively endorsed Trump’s view that he may replace any executive official, at any time, for any reason.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh hinted at the majority’s direction when he wrote in Trump v. Boyle that there is a “fair prospect” the Court will “narrow or overrule” old precedents limiting presidential power. In her dissent in Trump v. Slaughter, Justice Elena Kagan warned that the conservative majority appeared “raring” to overturn Humphrey’s Executor outright, much as it overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

The likely outcome is clear: the Supreme Court seems poised to endorse the most expansive interpretation of presidential power in American history.

If the Court formally adopts the unitary executive theory, the consequences will be profound. Trump and his allies portray this as an effort to dismantle the so-called “deep state” — the career bureaucrats and policy experts who have long managed federal agencies with some degree of independence. But independence is not subversion. These agencies were deliberately structured by Congress to protect the public interest over the long term, not to serve the immediate political aims of any president.

Justice Kagan has warned that overturning Humphrey’s Executor could mean “the end of administrative governance as we know it”. Without independent agencies, everything from consumer protection to environmental regulation to workplace safety could become subject to the political whims of whoever occupies the Oval Office. As Kagan explained, “Congress created them out of one basic vision — that in certain spheres of government, knowledgeable people from both parties, none of whom a president could remove without cause, would make decisions likely to advance the long-term public good.”

That vision may soon be replaced by something far more volatile: a system in which expertise yields to loyalty, and the boundaries between law and politics disappear.

The notion of a president who can control every federal official, override laws and direct the machinery of justice at will may seem extreme, but that is precisely what the unitary executive theory envisions. If the Supreme Court grants it full legitimacy, the president will no longer merely lead the executive branch — he will embody it.

Such a development would mark a fundamental break with the constitutional balance the framers designed. It would concentrate power in one individual to a degree unseen in American history. And once that power exists, it will not vanish when Trump leaves office. Future presidents, of either party, will inherit it — and the temptation to use it will be immense.

The framers of the Constitution feared monarchy above all else. They designed a system to prevent exactly this: a single leader unbound by law or oversight. But as the Supreme Court prepares to revisit Humphrey’s Executor and related precedents, the United States may be on the verge of crossing a constitutional Rubicon. When that happens, the line between democracy and dictatorship will no longer be a matter of theory. It will be a matter of fact.

(The Conversation)