Appropriations, Ambition, and the Madisonian Constitution

This article argues that the Supreme Court erred in CFSA by refusing to accept CFSA’s challenge to the financing structure of the CFPB as a violation of the Constitution’s Appropriations Clause. Instead, all three cases share certain fundamental characteristics that necessitate Supreme Court intervention to preserve the separation of powers and, by implication, to shore up the structural protections for individual liberty in the Constitution. Moreover, in none of the three cases did the Supreme Court fully understand the underlying causes of the breakdown in the Madisonian Constitution, perhaps accounting for why it failed in CFSA to see the fundamental conceptual similarity in the cases.

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