Executing Humphrey's Executor

Students of military justice will want to consider this paragraph from p. 53 of Judge Patricia A. Millett's dissent from today's decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Harris v. Bessent, No. 25-5037:

    Agencies are not the only entities at risk under the majority opinion’s new regime. Given the primarily adjudicatory nature of the MSPB and the NLRB, it is difficult to understand how the majority opinion’s rule does not eliminate removal restrictions on non-Article III judges, including judges of the Court of Federal Claims, the Bankruptcy Courts, the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. Apparently all of those adjudicators can now be fired based not on any constitutional decision by the Supreme Court or this court, but simply on the government’s application for a stay citing nothing more than the President’s inability to fire those officials as the requisite irreparable injury.