A Supreme Court case about stocks could help make Trump’s authoritarian dreams reality

The Fifth Circuit’s decision in Jarkesy isn’t particularly surprising. Indeed, it’s typical of a court that routinely hands down dubiously reasoned decisions that attempt to sabotage core functions of the federal government. We are less than two months into the Supreme Court’s current term, and it’s already heard two similar cases arising out of the Fifth Circuit — one of which declared a different agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, unconstitutional, and another which held that domestic abusers have a constitutional right to own a gun — neither of which the Supreme Court seems likely to affirm.

Jarkesy, however, could potentially end differently. None of the three rationales the Fifth Circuit offered for neutering the SEC are especially persuasive, but one of them is grounded in a pet project of the conservative Federalist Society known as the “unitary executive” — a project for which the current Court’s GOP-appointed majority has shown a great deal of sympathy.