James Wilson on official immunity and loyalty: "[T]he true form of loyalty [is] in obeying our sovereign according to law: let those, who would require it in any other form, know, that we call the persons who execute his commands, when contrary to law, disloyal and traitors." 1/3

11/12 It seems strange that the formalists on the Court have seemed to adopt Taft's views of the executive power with respect to removal—see Gorsuch in Collins v. Yellen, Thomas in Seila Law, and Scalia in Morrison—but not elsewhere, see Trump v. United States.

6/12 But perhaps even more interesting is how Black contrasted Roosevelt's vision of the presidency with that of William Howard Taft's (pp. 30–32):

3/12 Black attributes much of the shift to Teddy Roosevelt's presidency (pp. 23–30): "[W]hat [Roosevelt] did, consciously or unconsciously, was to revive and apply the doctrine of Hamilton, that the Constitution contains a general grant of executive power, ...

1/12 A series of interesting (and prescient) snippets from Henry Campbell Black's treatise "Relation of the Executive Power to Legislation" on the growth of the executive power from 1865 to 1919:

An updated draft of "Habeas Corpus and Void Judgments," forthcoming in Vol. 100 of the Notre Dame Law Review, is up on SSRN: papers.ssrn.com/abstract=462...