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The Supreme Court’s June 29, 2026 decisions in Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook raise fundamental questions about presidential power, the independence of federal agencies, and the constitutional structure of the administrative state. Although both cases involved the President’s authority to remove federal officials, the Court’s decisions appear to point in different directions. In our latest Consumer Finance Monitor podcast, our host, Alan Kaplinsky (founder and former practice group leader for 25 years and now Senior Counsel of our Consumer Financial Financial Services Group) discuss these decisions and their potentially far-reaching implications with Professor Lev Menand of Columbia Law School, one of the country’s leading scholars on administrative law, constitutional structure, financial regulation, and the Federal Reserve System.
In our discussion, Professor Menand questions the historical analogy between those early banks and the modern Federal Reserve Board, emphasizing the distinction between a bank (which is what the First and Second Banks of the United States were) and a government agency that regulates banks (which is a significant part of what the Federal Reserve Board does.) We explore whether Cook establishes a meaningful exception to Slaughter, how far that exception might extend, and whether other financial regulators, including the FDIC, might be able to invoke similar arguments to preserve their independence.
The conversation also examines several other important issues:
- The future of independent agencies
- The Federal Reserve’s constitutional status
- Justice Gorsuch’s nondelegation concerns
- Potential responses by Congress and the courts
- What lies ahead for financial services regulation
The discussion concludes with Professor Menand’s assessment of where the law may be headed over the next five years and why the long-term consequences of these decisions remain difficult to predict.
Listen to our latest Consumer Finance Monitor podcast for an in-depth discussion of these consequential decisions and their implications for the future of the administrative state and federal financial regulation.
Consumer Finance Monitor is hosted by Alan Kaplinsky, Senior Counsel at Ballard Spahr, and the founder and former chair of the firm's Consumer Financial Services Group. We encourage listeners to subscribe to the podcast on their preferred platform for weekly insights into developments in the consumer finance industry.
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