Justice Sotomayor was right for the wrong reasons

The force of her charge rests on a traditional understanding of the American founding, ritualistically repeated in classrooms across the country—and endorsed in a brief filed with the court by prominent historians, on which Justice Sotomayor relies. According to this view, the patriots in 1776 rebelled against royal power and, as a result, uniformly approached the design of their new executive in the 1780s “with a deep-seated, anti-monarchical sentiment”. It follows that the last thing the framers of the constitution could have intended was to create a president “with the powers and privileges of a king”.