Is Trump the President the Framers Feared?

What would the framers of the Constitution have thought about President Trump’s maximalist view of executive power? I explored that question in an essay that ran over the long weekend.

Readers had a lot to say in response. Their comments, and particularly their objections, help illuminate the subject. I’ll summarize them in a minute.

First, a little background.

The men who drafted the Constitution were working in the shadow of a bloody revolution meant to rid the new nation of a tyrant. In creating a completely new office — the presidency — they aimed to pull off a balancing act.

They wanted a chief executive who was nimble, decisive and energetic but still subject to constraints from the other branches if he went astray.

But the framers did not anticipate the rise of political parties loyal to their leaders, rendering the main constraint — the possibility of impeachment and removal by the Congress — so remote that it has never happened in the history of the Republic.

That’s the short version of my long essay.

In response, I heard from people abroad who were mystified that Americans venerate and think they ought to be governed by a document more than two centuries old.

“Stop revisiting the 1700s to find answers to today’s problems,” an Irish correspondent wrote. “No other country does that. The founders were brilliant — but expecting them to continue to protect America 250 years after their best work is a bit mean. They did their bit. It’s time someone else chipped in.”

(Thomas Jefferson would have agreed. In a 1789 letter to James Madison, he wrote that every constitution “naturally expires at the end of 19 years” because “the earth belongs always to the living generation.”)

Other readers said I had neglected the role of the Supreme Court, which they said had not only failed to check Trump but had also emboldened him. I found that a bit surprising, given the 17 years I spent covering the court.

In truth, the framers had not envisioned a leading role for what Alexander Hamilton called the “least dangerous” branch, one that “may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment, and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.”

Hamilton did not anticipate the power the Supreme Court would come to claim, including that it is the sole authoritative interpreter of the Constitution.

In that role, the current court has repeatedly sided with the president over Congress, saying, for instance, that lawmakers cannot shield the leaders of some independent agencies from arbitrary removal. The justices seem poised to issue a broad ruling on that question, one adopting the so-called unitary executive theory, in the coming weeks.

And the court set out a muscular vision of executive power in its 2024 decision granting Trump, then a candidate, substantial immunity from prosecution on charges that he had tried to subvert the 2020 election. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, emphasized the framers’ desire for a vigorous and effective president.

But that was only half of the equation, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent.

“The majority’s single-minded fixation on the president’s need for boldness and dispatch,” she wrote, “ignores the countervailing need for accountability and restraint.”

Still other readers wrote that the framers failed to anticipate not only the rise of political parties but also the role that money has come to play in politics and the bare-knuckled fights over gerrymandering. There, too, they wrote, the Supreme Court was at least complicit in endangering democracy.

In all, readers were frustrated by what they saw as dual failures: of the framers to foresee a president like Trump and of the other branches to use their constitutional powers.

Other Things Worth Knowing About

• The Supreme Court is in its homestretch and is set to release more than 20 decisions in argued cases in the next month or so, including major ones on birthright citizenship, transgender athletes and presidential power. This handy tracker will help you stay up to speed.

• David Lat keeps tabs on Supreme Court clerkship hiring in his Original Jurisdiction newsletter. In the latest one, he discloses the names of almost all of the clerks who will start work this summer, after a lifetime of honing glittering résumés.

• Nina Totenberg reflects on her more than 50 years of covering the court on the “Advisory Opinions” video podcast (starting around 40:00), revealing the secret to her exceptional energy: chocolate-covered espresso beans.

• “If Roe, Then Buckley,” by Larry Lessig. In one of two recent papers arguing that the Supreme Court’s reasoning in overturning the constitutional right to abortion should call into question decisions popular with many conservatives, Lessig, a law professor at Harvard, writes that “the same method of reasoning must reach the conclusion that modern campaign finance law has no original democratic basis.”

• “If Roe Had To Go … So Must Bruen,” by Rebecca Brown, Lee Epstein and Mitu Gulati. The authors make a similar argument about the 2022 Second Amendment decision that required judges to look to history in assessing the constitutionality of gun control measures.

Mailbag

Who Gets to Administer Oaths of Office?

This week’s question was submitted by John Sargent, who turns out to be my colleague Ann Marimow’s father-in-law. You’ll hear from Ann herself in a minute.

I’m interested in the selection of Clarence Thomas to swear in Kevin Warsh as the next Fed chair. Is there a protocol for the selection of justices, or for other such federal appointments? For example, might there be a process that is run by the chief justice, or is it dictated by another process?

There is no fixed procedure for deciding who administers the oath of office, and personal relationships often play a role. In remarks after he was sworn in on Friday at the White House, with Trump in attendance, Warsh described Justice Thomas as “my esteemed friend,” adding that the justice was “a brilliant and independent thinker, a man dedicated to our Constitution and, no less important, a joyful and collegial presence on our highest court.”

A federal law authorizes a wide array of officials to administer the oath. Jerome Powell, Warsh’s predecessor, was sworn in for both of his terms by other Fed officials in modest ceremonies at the central bank.

By custom, the chief justice swears in the president, whose oath is different from that of other officials and is set out in the Constitution. But seven presidents have looked elsewhere. Calvin Coolidge, for instance, was sworn in by his father, a notary public.

Justice Thomas, asked by a reporter how he thought the ceremony for Warsh had gone, expressed satisfaction. “Well, he’s sworn in,” the justice said.

I’d love to hear your questions on the law, the courts or whatever is on your mind. Send them my way at the-docket@nytimes.com.

Supreme Court justices — sometimes they’re just like us.

On Tuesday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a Washington resident, was among the nearly 250 city residents who reported for jury duty at the D.C. Superior Court, a spokesman for the court confirmed.

This was not her first time getting the call. Over the years, Justice Sotomayor, a former trial court judge in New York, has espoused the virtues of jury service when friends and family have sought her advice for getting out of it.

“This is the one activity where you’re asked to serve and to actually come to a decision on behalf of the society that you represent,” she said during a visit to N.Y.U. Law School early in her tenure.

Federal law allows certain “public officers,” including Supreme Court justices and elected officials, to take a pass from jury service in federal court. But a Superior Court spokesman said he was unaware of any such exemption for service at Washington’s local courthouse.

Other justices have been part of the pool in the past. Justice Elena Kagan, who also lives in Washington, has reported for jury service at the D.C. courthouse several times since she joined the bench in 2010.

Chief Justice Roberts, a resident of Montgomery County, Md., was considered and questioned for a civil trial at the courthouse in Rockville about a decade ago.

Both were dismissed, according to The Washington Post.

On Tuesday, Justice Sotomayor never made it into the jury box for questioning and was not among the 58 people empaneled on a jury. By noon, the jury office had notified the justice that she would not be needed, according to a court spokesman, Douglas Buchanan.

The justice did, however, stick around to have lunch with some of the judges.