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In Trump v. Slaughter, the end-of-term blockbuster allowing the president to fire members of independent federal agencies, Chief Justice John Roberts embraced a vision of executive power so sweeping that it would make King George III blush. Speaking for the conservative supermajority, he claimed (falsely) that the Constitution required him to vastly expand Donald Trump’s authority—but assured us that the consequence would be a government more accountable to the people. Allowing Trump to fire the heads of virtually any agency, Roberts asserted, would make him “responsible to his country,” allowing voters to reward or punish him based on his decisions alone. The chief justice congratulated himself and his Republican-appointed colleagues for thus restoring democratic accountability, even as they demolished the legal safeguards that make democratic government function.

On this week’s episode of Amicus, co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discuss the historical inaccuracies, logical fallacies, and political fictions underlying this radical consolidation of power in the president. They are joined by two experts on executive power: Jed Shugerman, a professor at Boston University School of Law, and Sam Bagenstos, a professor at University of Michigan Law School. An excerpt of their conversation, below, has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Dahlia Lithwick: The decision in Slaughter will have knock-on effects that most people probably haven’t even begun to contemplate. It’s also another example of bad history strangling America. Sam, can you talk about how Justice Sonia Sotomayor addresses that in her dissent?

Sam Bagenstos: I think the Sotomayor dissent is very strong. It shows that she really did go very extensively through the amicus briefs and the underlying scholarship to explain why this story that Roberts is spinning about history is made up. It’s just not the true........

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