Blackstone on Removal Power: Reprise
Michael Ramsey
Here are my four posts on Blackstone and removal power, responding to Professor Jed Shugerman's criticisms of originalist scholarship on the subject:
Blackstone on Removal Power, Part 1: Blackstone on the Unitary Executive
Blackstone on Removal Power, Part 2: Blackstone on Judicial Tenure
Blackstone on Removal Power, Part 3: Blackstone on Subordinate Magistrates
Blackstone on Removal Power, Part 4: Blackstone on Removal of Subordinate Magistrates
Professor Shugerman argued, in the article linked above and in a series of blog posts here, that originalist scholarship -- particularly in a brief submitted to the Supreme Court in Seila Law v. CFPB, greatly overstated the extent to which Blackstone described a broad removal power in the English system. The posts noted above review Blackstone's writings on the subject. In my view, they confirm that the originalist scholarship is basically correct on the key issue: a reader of Blackstone would conclude that the monarch, as part of the crown's unified executive power over law enforcement, had broad removal power over principal, national-level executive officers, and in large part had such a power over local executive officers as well. I note, though, that Professor Shugerman makes some fair criticisms of the way the material was presented in the Seila Law brief, where it was necessarily described in somewhat abbreviated form due to space limitations.