I’m studying the Morrison v. Olson case in my political science class and I literally cannot understand it. Why is it even important? I’ve literally never heard about it until now. I feel so stupid because it’s literally going over my head. Please help!
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This is from Wikipedia but the facts are accurate. I’m a lawyer btw.
Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654 (1988), was a Supreme Court of the United States decision that determined the Independent Counsel Act was constitutional. Morrison also set important precedent determining the scope of Congress’s ability to encumber the President’s authority to remove Officers of the United States from office. In Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2020), the Supreme Court distinguished Morrison as a narrow exception applying only to inferior officers.
Morrison v. Olson determined that it was not unconstitutional to restrict the Attorney General’s ability to fire Department of Justice officials without cause. The Independent Counsel Act made it illegal for the Attorney General to fire an inferior without good reason, which is important because it means a DOJ official won’t be fired just because doing their job inconvenienced someone above them.
Imagine a wild scenario where a sitting President commits a criminal act that the Department of Justice, part of the Executive Branch, then has to investigate. If the Attorney General was, say, more committed to loyalty to the President than upholding the law, prior to the Independent Counsel Act, they could just fire any Justice Department official looking into the matter without having to justify it.
A lawsuit was filed after the ICA went into effect that then got appealed to the Supreme Court – the Morrison v. Olson case – that challenged that the ICA substantially inhibited the Executive Branch’s power to the benefit of the other branches, but the SC ultimately ruled that this was not the case.
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