{"id":3800,"date":"2026-01-21T10:48:35","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T14:48:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/?p=3800"},"modified":"2026-01-21T10:48:35","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T14:48:35","slug":"does-braidwood-treat-independent-agencies-like-a-major-question-austin-piatt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/does-braidwood-treat-independent-agencies-like-a-major-question-austin-piatt\/","title":{"rendered":"Does\u00a0Braidwood\u00a0Treat Independent Agencies Like a Major Question? \u2013 Austin Piatt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/90\/2026\/01\/Piatt-Braidwood-vf.pdf\">PDF<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1236\" height=\"194\" src=\"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/90\/2022\/08\/HLS_JOPP_Logo.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2542\" style=\"width:750px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/90\/2022\/08\/HLS_JOPP_Logo.png 1236w, https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/90\/2022\/08\/HLS_JOPP_Logo-300x47.png 300w, https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/90\/2022\/08\/HLS_JOPP_Logo-1024x161.png 1024w, https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/90\/2022\/08\/HLS_JOPP_Logo-768x121.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1236px) 100vw, 1236px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Consider the following two quotes from recent Supreme Court cases. One: \u201cCongress must speak clearly if it wishes to insulate officers from at-will removal.\u201d\u00a0Two: \u201cWe expect Congress to speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise powers of vast economic and political significance.\u201d\u00a0The first comes from\u00a0<em>Kennedy<\/em>\u00a0<em>v. Braidwood Management, Inc.<\/em>, where the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force against an Appointments Clause challenge, relying at least implicitly on unitary executive theory. The second is from\u00a0<em>NFIB v. OSHA<\/em>,\u00a0where the Court rejected the Occupational Safety and Health Administration\u2019s attempt to implement a vaccine mandate on certain businesses, relying on the major questions doctrine. So, it is fair to ask if the Court employed a method of statutory interpretation in\u00a0<em>Braidwood<\/em>\u00a0akin to what it has done in its major-questions-doctrine context. The Supreme Court recently heard oral argument in\u00a0<em>Trump<\/em>\u00a0<em>v. Slaughter<\/em>, a case that many suspect will be one of the most consequential of the term as it could overturn the almost century-old precedent of\u00a0<em>Humphrey\u2019s Executor v. United States<\/em>. But there is a reason the case may not be as consequential as people think. As the similarities between\u00a0<em>Braidwood\u00a0<\/em>and the Court\u2019s major questions  cases show, the Court has already come up with a way for it\u2014and, importantly, lower courts\u2014to avoid confronting\u00a0<em>Humphrey\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>or finding an agency structure unconstitutional<em>\u00a0<\/em>in a wide swath of challenges to executive agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This Essay asserts that\u00a0<em>Braidwood<\/em>\u00a0bears a striking resemblance to the Court\u2019s major-questions-doctrine line of cases and attempts to tease out what that means for future litigation. In both situations, the Court presumes that Congress\u2019s legislation conforms to the Constitution\u2014to Article I\u2019s vesting of legislative power in Congress in the major-questions-doctrine cases and to Article II\u2019s vesting of executive power in the President in the unitary-executive cases. So although unitary executive theory applies to agencies\u2019 structure and the major questions doctrine speaks to an agency\u2019s attempted exercise of substantive power, the similarity between the two hints that the Court\u2019s presumptions in each context are the same. These similarities reveal the Court\u2019s trend towards a clear statement rule for cases raising unitary executive questions and could also mean that whether\u00a0<em>Humphrey\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0survives may not be as practically significant as people think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" \/>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/90\/2026\/01\/Piatt-Braidwood-vf.pdf\">Click here <\/a>to continue reading the full piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Consider the following two quotes from recent Supreme Court cases. One: \u201cCongress must speak clearly if it wishes to insulate officers from at-will removal.\u201d\u00a0Two: \u201cWe expect Congress to speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise powers of vast economic and political significance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-per-curiam"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZSiL-Zi","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}