Does Seila Law allow the U.S. president to fire anyone working in any U.S. agencies without cause? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seila_Law_LLC_v._Consumer_Financial_Protection_Bureau Does Seila Law v. CFPB allow the U.S. president to fire anyone working in any U.S. agencies without cause? I am wondering if there might be exceptions. The law targets specifically independent agencies, but does it include all independent agencies or some of them only. What are the criteria for determining if an agencies fall under the &quot;umbrella&quot; of the law? And are dependent agencies included, meaning all U.S. agencies?
&quot;Seila Law&quot; is a law firm, not a law. They were a party in a recent SCOTUS decision, Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 591 U.S ___, which involved the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created by Congress, under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The court held that the structure of that law (regarding appoinntment and firing of the director) is unconstitutional: The CFPB’s leadership by a single individual removable only for inefficiency, neglect, or malfeasance violates the separation of powers. More specifically, Article II vests the entire “executive Power” in the President alone, but the Constitution presumes that lesser executive officers will assist the President in discharging his duties. The President’s executive power generally includes the power to supervise — and, if necessary, remove — those who exercise the President’s authority on his behalf. The President’s removal power has long been confirmed by history and precedent. The law in question addresses a single position, director of CFPB, not all government agencies. &quot;Agency&quot; is defined in 18 USC 6 as includes any department, independent establishment, commission, administration, authority, board or bureau of the United States or any corporation in which the United States has a proprietary interest, unless the context shows that such term was intended to be used in a more limited sense. &quot;Department&quot; is then defined as one of the executive departments enumerated in section 1 of Title 5, unless the context shows that such term was intended to describe the executive, legislative, or judicial branches of the government. POTUS firing power is about the executive branch, not the judicial or legislative branches, so it depends on what you mean by &quot;agency&quot;. You can infer possible outcomes based on this ruling, but what they literally said is that particular law is unconstitutional.
Do these warnings have any legal force? In the United States, no. They do not have any legal force. Some have tried to argue that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) applies; however, this law only applies to intercepting e-mails—not accidentally sending to the wrong party. There is no legal protection for "reply all" or "accidental send" human errors. If so, what are their consequences? If you're asking why some people put them in there, even if it's not legally enforceable, one reason is lawyers trying to prevent an accidental waiver of attorney-client privilege. Generally, a waiver of the attorney-client privileged must be intentional and knowing. Therefore, some argue that a disclaimer could help one argue that privilege was not waived. Although, I could not find a published case where an e-mail disclaimer actually helped this argument. Additionally, placing the e-mail disclaimer on the bottom of an e-mail (which is customary) is less effective than placing one at the top. As a note, some legal commentators and ethics committee's suggest that lawyers should use encryption "to ensure the confidentiality of such communications remain so when the circumstance calls for it, particularly if the information at issue is highly sensitive and the use of encryption is not onerous." See Legal Productivity's Post that quotes a California Ethics Opinion For more info, read this article here from the American Bar Association's Litigation Section regarding the efficacy of E-mail disclaimers: Do Email Disclaimers Really Work?
In the United States, the answer depends on who is unlawfully in power. In the hypothetical you presented, the answer is probably that the law would remain valid, as Congress generally has the sole authority to pass judgment on whether to admit the elected person. A third party would not have the ability to challenge the law based on the qualifications of a lawmaker. But if we were dealing with an administrative official promulgating regulations, those rules would generally be void if that official were unlawfully appointed. That was the case in Nat'l Labor Relations Bd. v. Canning, 573 U.S. 513 (2014), where a cola distributor challenged a labor regulation, saying that the members of the NLRB who enacted it were improperly appointed. The Court agreed that the appointments were improper, so the regulations were nullified. A judicial decision coming out under these circumstances would also be nullified if one of the judges weren't really a judge. That happened just last year, in Yovino v. Rizo. In that case, ten judges from the Ninth Circuit heard a case, and the vote split 6-4. But the author of the majority opinion died before the decision was published, which is when it become effective. The Supreme Court held that because there were therefore only five votes for that decision, it was not a majority opinion, and therefore not binding on future Ninth Circuit panels.
I take that to mean that section 14 alone should not be construed to give a department the power to sue under sub section (1), nor the ability to be sued under sub section (2). Rather, if some other law, or some other section of that law confers such a power or ability, section 14 indicates how the power should be used, that is, gives the proper procedure. But if no such other law is in effect, section 14 alone won't do. If the law has simply said: civil proceedings under this Act by the Crown may be instituted by (a) the appropriate government department in its own That might have been construed to grant such powers to every "appropriate " department, which apparently was not desired.
The question that you pose can't be answered in the abstract and the conceptual framework you introduce in the section entitled &quot;Resume&quot; is largely unsound from a legal perspective, even if it may have some political theory usefulness. Indeed, even the framework of &quot;relative power&quot; doesn't really work. The question almost always presents itself in a binary fashion. Either a law enforcement officer has authority to do some particular thing, or the officer doesn't. Frequently, there are multiple law enforcement officers in different agencies who all have the authority to do a particular thing, and whoever gets there first may do so. In U.S. law, law enforcement is highly decentralized. There are hundreds of distinct federal law enforcement agencies, dozens of distinct law enforcement agencies in every single state, and almost every local government (sometimes even school districts, water boards, and park districts) have their own law enforcement agencies. All told, the number of independent law enforcement agencies in the U.S. is in the low tens of thousands. Something on the order of 90%+ of those law enforcement officers report to local governments like cities and counties and have no direct chain of authority that goes up beyond that point. The remainder are split roughly equally between the state level and the federal level, but highly fragmented within each such level between different agencies within each state and with the federal government. The most common kind of law enforcement officer in the federal government is not the stereotypical F.B.I. agent. Instead, it is a federal park ranger. A few small states are more centralized (e.g. Hawaii), but massive decentralization is the norm. The law enforcement officers in every single one of those agencies has a statutorily defined jurisdiction. Rather than being a neat hierarchy in which one law enforcement agent is always superior to another law enforcement agent, one has to analyze the circumstances in light of a particular grant of jurisdiction. There are general trends in how these grants of authority are made, but they are far from uniform. Most grants of authority include both territorial and subject matter elements. State police can typically arrest anyone for a violation of state law within their state, but not for violations of federal law or the laws of another state under circumstances where a citizens arrest is not authorized and where there isn't a warrant outstanding. A state game warden can arrest you for violating hunting laws in his geographic area, but not for violating state tax laws or federal immigration laws. A village constable in a tiny hamlet in rural Tennessee can arrest the chief of police for the Tennessee Valley Authority's law enforcement agency (the TVA is a federally charted independent government agency), for drunk driving in that constable's village. In contrast, an F.B.I. special agent doesn't have the authority to make that arrest, but could arrest either the village constable or the TVA chief of police for taking a bribe contrary to federal anti-corruption laws. There are law enforcement officers who specialize in investigating crimes by other law enforcement officers (often in the same agency). In state and local police agencies these are usually called &quot;internal affairs officers&quot;, with a unit in the state police or state bureau of investigation that works closely with a unit of the state attorney general's office having a secondary role in this task. In the federal government, the Inspector General's office in each cabinet department is typically charged with primary responsibility for these kinds of investigations. In the military, improprieties by active duty soldiers in connection with their implementation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice would usually be investigated by the criminal investigation service in each cabinet level department (i.e. the Army, the Navy (including the Marines Corps), and the Air Force) within the Department of Defense. But in neither case is the conceptual issue one of authority. Usually any law enforcement officer in a particular agency has authority to arrest any other law enforcement officer from the same agency (with the possible exception of their direct superiors). It is a question of focus and job responsibilities, not of legal authority. There is a notion of federal supremacy under the U.S. Constitution. In a bald showdown of authority between federal law enforcement officers and state law enforcement officers, say, over who is entitled to custody of a non-law enforcement officer criminal who has been arrested, the federal law enforcement officers will prevail. But, these showdowns are rare, and interagency conflicts within state governments and the federal government respectively, if not reconciled sooner, are more often resolved by a Governor or President, through a chain of management command authority within that governmental entity, than in the courts. Even when there is no one shared chief executive between law enforcement officers, usually these disputes are resolved by negotiation between the chiefs of the respective officers, rather than through legal channels. This is much less true in most countries other than the U.S. Most countries have far fewer independent law enforcement agencies, and have more clear and hierarchical lines of authority between them. This distinction is illustrated by your professor's example: If the Queen of England pointed a gun at the President of America and the President of America pointed a gun at the Queen of England, could you prosecute and/ or charge any of them? In the U.K., nobody has the authority to arrest the Queen, and the authority to arrest the U.S. President would be highly limited by diplomatic treaties relating to the treatment of foreign heads of state. In the U.S., the question is tricker and quite fact specific. The President has immunity for his official acts, but not for his private acts. If this standoff with guns breaks out on the floor of the U.N. in the context of a breakdown of negotiations, the President hasn't committed a U.S. crime. On the other hand, suppose that the President and the Queen have been having a private tryst at a bed and breakfast at our small village hamlet in Tennessee where they have managed to escape their respective security details. (Pardon me for bringing such an icky vision into your head, this is purely for educational purposes and you should censor your own thoughts as you imagine it. I blame the questioner's professor for presenting a scenario that has this possible aspect to it.) The village constable can arrest the President for this crime in violation of Tennessee law (assuming that the President doesn't have legal justification for his acts such as self-defense) since this act was conducted in an unofficial capacity. But he probably can't arrest and charge the Queen under diplomatic treaties that the U.S. has with the U.K. In contrast, a U.S. Secret Service agent would have authority to seize the Queen sufficiently to disarm her and prevent her from being a threat to the President, even if he couldn't charge her with any crime.
Much of the Code of Federal Regulations consists of restatements of statutory provisions found in the United States Code. In the case of Title 8, CFR, these provisions are largely to be found in Title 8, USC, which codifies the Immigration and Nationality Act. To the extent that anything in the CFR duplicates a statute, it's legally binding, because it is in fact a statutory provision. That case is not particularly interesting to your question, of course. There is another law that governs the CFR, which is the Administrative Procedure Act. In short, this law requires the executive to abide by its promulgated regulations and not to change them without following certain procedures, and it gives the courts the power to enforce this. Therefore, the answer to the question Must the USCIS abide by the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)? Is basically yes. If you believe they haven't, you can take them to court.
There is no statutory definition of insider trading, and the question of who is included is answered by the SEC. It includes "Government employees who traded based on confidential information they learned because of their employment with the government". Under 5 USC 2105, POTUS is an "employee", though that is w.r.t. Title 5 and insider trading laws are under Title 15. But as it happens, the Title 15 definition of "executive branch employee" assigns the Title 5 definition of "employee" to "executive branch employee" and explicitly lists POTUS. Pub. L. No. 112-105, §§ 9(b)(1) explicitly says Executive branch employees, judicial officers, and judicial employees are not exempt from the insider trading prohibitions arising under the securities laws, including section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b–5 thereunder. Insider trading laws are not limited to "information about company X", they are framed in terms of non-public information, which could include information about a country: "no executive branch employee may use nonpublic information derived from such person’s position as an executive branch employee or gained from the performance of such person’s official responsibilities as a means for making a private profit".
As Tom says and these guys reiterate (I'm quoting those guys), "Employment relationships are presumed to be “at-will” in all U.S. states except Montana. The U.S. is one of a handful of countries where employment is predominantly at-will". Montana (Dept. of Labor and Industry) also states that they are the only ones in the US like that. Montana Code 39-2-904(1)(b) states that a discharge is unlawful if "the discharge was not for good cause and the employee had completed the employer's probationary period of employment". (2)(a) then states that "During a probationary period of employment, the employment may be terminated at the will of either the employer or the employee on notice to the other for any reason or for no reason". There is a presumptive 6 month probationary period in case an employer say nothing, but it could be longer or shorter (it can be 7 years for university professors, and I don't find anything in the code preventing an employer from setting the probationary period at 50 years).