{"id":1832,"date":"2026-04-14T08:46:47","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T12:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/?page_id=1832"},"modified":"2026-04-14T08:46:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T12:46:47","slug":"quit-breathing-down-my-neck-an-attempt-to-secure-full-independence-for-our-nations-watchdogs","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/in-print\/volume-38-issue-4-fall-2025\/quit-breathing-down-my-neck-an-attempt-to-secure-full-independence-for-our-nations-watchdogs\/","title":{"rendered":"Quit Breathing Down My Neck: An Attempt to Secure Full Independence for Our Nation\u2019s Watchdogs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Inspector General\u2019s ability to remain quartered off from the push and pull of partisan politics has never been more vital to American democracy.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The reelection of Donald Trump has resulted in significant firings in the oversight community.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> President Trump has made his deep distrust for the executive branch bureaucracy known.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Inspectors General (IG), the watchdogs seated within the executive agencies, are no exception.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> In the spring of 2020, during his first term in office, President Trump went on a firing spree, removing two permanent and two acting IGs.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> After only a month into his second term, seventeen IGs have already been fired by the President.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Overall, these actions have led to heighted congressional interest in securing further independence for IGs through the Inspector General Act.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> One mechanism that has been heavily debated is the for-cause removal provision and whether it can constitutionally be applied to an IG.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This Note will analyze whether for-cause removal protection would be constitutional as applied to the role of the IG. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Part I, this Note summarizes the Act. In Part, II, this paper explores the IG jurisprudence from <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Myers<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to today. In Part III, the Note questions whether IGs are officers of the United States and Part V concludes IGs are inferior officers. Lastly, in Part V, this Note rewrites the statute that governs IGs to insulate them from the Court\u2019s past critiques of for-cause removal. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">While the case law remains inconclusive, this paper will rewrite the Act to frame IGs as inferior officers for whom the for-cause removal provision would be constitutional and then analyze whether reframing IGs as inferior officers undermines their core mission of independent oversight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/24\/2026\/04\/GT-GJLE250068.pdf\">Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Inspector General\u2019s ability to remain quartered off from the push and pull of partisan politics has never been more vital to American democracy. The reelection of Donald Trump has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14207,"featured_media":0,"parent":1755,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-1832","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14207"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1834,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1832\/revisions\/1834"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}