Fordham Law Review Volume 89 Issue 5 Article 14 2021 Presidential Removal: The Marbury Problem and the Madison Solutions Jed Handelsman Shugerman Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Jed Handelsman Shugerman, Presidential Removal: The Marbury Problem and the Madison Solutions, 89 Fordham L. Rev. 2085 (2021). Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol89/iss5/14 This Symposium is brought to you for free and open access by FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fordham Law Review by an authorized editor of FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. PRESIDENTIAL REMOVAL: THE MARBURY PROBLEM AND THE MADISON SOLUTIONS Jed Handelsman Shugerman* [Marbury’s] appointment was not revocable; but vested in the officer legal rights, which are protected by the laws of his country. To withhold his commission, therefore, is an act deemed by the court not warranted by law, but violative of a vested legal right. —Chief Justice John Marshall1 INTRODUCTION This sentence from Marbury v. Madison2 is both a potential argument against the unitary executive theory of total executive removal power . and in favor of it. Why was William Marbury’s office as justice of the peace irrevocable? Why didn’t President Thomas Jefferson just fire Marbury and moot this case? On the other hand, this sentence also seems to tell us that “vested” rights are irrevocable, so perhaps vested powers are also irrevocable (or “indefeasible” by Congress and not conditional by legislation)? Here is another sentence relying on this absolutist connotation of “vested”: “Under our Constitution, the ‘executive Power’—all of it—is ‘vested in a President,’ who must ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’”3 In Seila Law LLC v.