On Independence Day, Let’s Reclaim Independence from the ‘Fourth Branch’

‘This wolf comes as a wolf.”

Almost 40 years ago, Justice Antonin Scalia warned of the rise of a “fourth branch” of government: an unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy wielding power once reserved for the president. He was the lone dissenter in Morrison v. Olson, a 1988 Supreme Court case that upheld the creation of “independent counsels.” These special prosecutors could investigate and charge high-ranking executive officials but were not answerable to the president. At the time, Scalia stood alone in dissent. Today, his warning reads like prophecy. And it’s a reminder that, on Independence Day, what matters is not just our rights that are written on paper but the constitutional structure that protects them.