Last week’s episode of Amicus included a mailbag special in which Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern answered listeners’ burning questions about the law. Amicus listeners have a lot of smart questions, so we’re running an occasional “Dear (Juris)Prudence” series in which we share your questions and Mark and Dahlia’s answers. Write to amicus@slate.com to pose a question to Dahlia and Mark. This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Dear (Juris)Prudence,

Considering the essential need of maintaining independent agencies within the government and the obviously devastating decision by the Supreme Court in the Slaughter case, what does the Constitution and/or law say about when a new president takes charge?

Can they hire new leaders of those departments, replace or remove without cause? Is there language that says the end of a presidential term is different than the conditions during a current term?

Mark Joseph Stern: In addition to all the other harms of Slaughter, the decision lets an outgoing president completely hobble all of these agencies by firing or ousting their leaders and leaving them inquorate, meaning without a quorum, when the next president comes in.

And unlike with single-head agencies, things like the Justice Department, where we have an acting attorney general until we can get a real attorney general again, generally........

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