S8 Ep181: The Historical Context of Humphrey's Executor: Colleague Richard Epstein analyzes the historical context of Humphrey's Executor, explaining how the administrative state grew from the 1930s, detailing FDR's attempt to politicize independent commissions and

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 13 December 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

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The Historical Context of Humphrey's Executor: Colleague Richard Epstein analyzes the historical context of Humphrey's Executor, explaining how the administrative state grew from the 1930s, detailing FDR's attempt to politicize independent commissions and the Supreme Court's justification, arguing that while constitutionally questionable, long-standing prescription has solidified these agencies' legal status over time.

1955

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0:00.0	This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchel. The Supreme Court hearing oral arguments on a case that very much touches upon the same work that my colleague and friend and guest, Professor Richard Epstein of the Civitas Institute has been working on for several
0:22.0	years. Richard's case is known as Heidi Sturrup versus the United States Department of Defense.
0:29.5	Most recently, the case has been known as slaughter.
0:34.2	Slaughter, Trump versus slaughter, the ability of the president to fire a member of an independent
0:38.8	board. That was the same case, Heidi Sturrup, the authority of the president, then Mr. Biden,
0:46.1	to fire a member of an independent board. This all connects to a Supreme Court case in the 1930s,
0:52.3	which is why it's so wonderful to have Richard here,
0:55.1	because we're talking about the New Deal, at the same time we were talking about Biden,
0:59.6	at the same time we're talking about Trump,
1:01.5	and the future of the power of the president to possess the authority over his own branch of government.
1:08.1	Richard, a very good evening to you.
1:09.5	We need to start in the 1930s.
1:12.6	What do we need to know about Humphrey's executor that lingers with us so much that it was argued
1:17.7	again in the Supreme Court in these last days? Good evening to you. Well, essentially what
1:22.4	happened is there was a major transformation in the United States government from a small nation of 3 million people and a couple of executive departments to a large nation with a big administrative state.
1:37.1	And in order to run an administrative state, you can't do it through the courts.
1:41.9	What you have to do is have administrative bodies that can handle
1:45.2	high volume issues. The two major ones at the time were workman's compensation cases, which
1:51.7	laid without separate commissions, and then rate-making cases for the railroad's and other kinds of
1:56.9	industry. And you note the word that I'm talking about in both cases is commission. And these
2:02.1	commissions began as reform efforts inside the states. And then people wanted to bring it over to the
2:07.2	federal government when you had exactly the same kind of situations dealing with rates on the one
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