Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said on Saturday that she hopes the court’s decision granting former presidents broad criminal immunity will be overturned, saying her colleagues have done some “crazy things.”
Appearing for a civics education talk at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, the liberal justice also publicly commented for the first time on this week’s midterm contests, when Democrats swept control of both chambers of Congress.
The justice specifically singled out the court’s 6-3 decision along ideological lines that former presidents enjoy at least presumptive immunity for their official acts. At the time, the justice wrote that it made Trump and his successors a “king above the law.”
This is a really great question! You’ve already got the underlying reason down too - all the various executive departments were created to distribute the enormous administrative burden of figuring out how to enforce laws that have been passed.
Interestingly, Congress is actually in charge of creating the various departments. The President is not authorized to abolish or create new ones, or to expand their jurisdiction or invent new powers, however they are responsible for proposing leaders to each and soliciting their guidance for topics within their domain. How this currently gets enforced is part of the issue however.
Independent agencies also exist that do not explicitly fall under the authority of the President. While the President can remove heads of departments for any reason, there is a much higher bar for removal of independent agency board members.
As the office of the attorney general is one of the government’s oldest, established during the first Congress, this may be a matter of combatting tradition more than anything else! This predates independent agencies by something like 100 years.
I should also edit in a clarification that the DOJ not being an independent agency is what allows it to be more partisan than something like the FTC. Also that an independent agency does not in and of itself entirely mitigate partisan politics from its decision making.