This text arose as an entry on a various-and-sundry page. For reasons of length, it was moved to a separate page before publication, but (beyond some polishing and proof-reading) not re-worked to reflect the unintended length and the higher quality that individual pages usually have relative individual various-and-sundry entries.
I speak in terms of “firing” and its variations, because (a) cases around a “firing” in a stricter sense (e.g. a removal due to poor performance) are clearer than some implied by more general terms (e.g. “letting go”), (b) the reporting around Trump, DOGE, etc., has usually spoken in these terms, and (c) the association of this word with Trump through “The Apprentice” makes it a natural choice. However, much or most of the text also applies in other cases, including when someone is let go for lack of work to perform or of money to pay for that work. (Often also included with the term “firing”, but more dubiously.)
I also occasionally use “employ[ee/er/ment]” as generic terms, even when other terms might be more suitable in the context at hand.
Leading up to the time of writing (2025-03-21/22), there have been a great many issues of courts getting in the way of Trump, including his attempts to fire staff that is insufficiently trusted or otherwise “non grata”. Now, it seems, the Israelis have a similar problem, around one Ronen Bar, (former?) head of Shin Bet, who was first fired and then had the firing blocked-for-now by the Israeli supreme court.
I make no claim as to who is in the right or wrong from a strictly legal perspective; however, there is something very troubling here from other perspectives. Consider positions like those of Bar and several “higher” positions related to Trump firings: If someone holds a position on that level of (implied and/or necessary) trust, influence, and importance, sufficient confidence must be present that he can and will actually perform in a manner worthy of that trust, influence, and importance. In the case of the U.S., where there is a clear and elected head of a reasonably well-defined executive branch (i.e. the POTUS), it would make great sense to have the ability for that head to fire those (perceived by him as) not sufficiently suitable “at will”.
I am not sufficiently familiar with the Israeli political system to judge whether the same necessarily applies there. However, some of the below arguments certainly do, being largely independent of the (democratic) political system—and I do contend that the U.S. system is superior to e.g. the extended Westminster family (to which Israel seems to belong) and that the presence of such a “clear and elected head of a reasonably well-defined executive branch” would be highly recommendable to other countries, together with a clearer separation of the executive and the legislative than in e.g. the U.K., Germany, and Sweden.
Certainly, it is unconscionable that a court can dictate that someone on such a level must remain in office, even be it “just” pending further investigation, as immense damage can be done through incompetence, negligence, deliberate abuse of power, and other problems. A particular danger is that someone re-instated by court order will afterwards be out of line, even when he was not actually out of line before the firing.
Indeed, looking at it from the point of view of the fired, there might well be a factor of unfairness involved, e.g. (objectively) because the loss of confidence was spurious or (subjectively) because the fired views certain matters differently. However, would that justify keeping someone on the job? No—there simply is too much at stake beyond some level. What it can (at least, in the objective cases) justify is some amount of recompense, e.g. to cover an expected loss of income over some interval of time. Further, for positions where something like an honorable/dishonorable discharge applies (be it somewhat literally, e.g. in the military, or more metaphorically) there might be additional bars to a dishonorable discharge that do not exist when someone is fired in conjunction with an honorable discharge. (And, of course, a court case around a firing-with-a-dishonorable-discharge should not center on, delay, or prevent the firing—it should only deal with the honorable/dishonorable aspect of the issue, in that the court tests whether the “dis-” was justified and is in a position to strike it, if and when appropriate.)
An interesting analogy is employment law in Germany, where it is much harder to fire regular employees than managerial ones and managerial ones than executive ones—to the point that I have heard rumors of cases where someone was promoted for the purpose of later firing him.
The underlying reason is that the higher the position, the greater confidence is needed, the greater harm can be done in cases of e.g. incompetence or malice, and so on—just like in politics.
A potential angle is that political concerns would get in the way of the proper functioning of some agency or other. While there is some legitimacy to such concerns, experiences point strongly to greater risks in the opposite direction, e.g. that the agency becomes a thing onto it self, removed from democratic control and working outside the rule of law and whatnot. Consider e.g. the current U.S. problems, how German civil servants are bound by “Dienstanweisungen” (internal orders) from their employers that (at least in the eyes of these employers) supersede the law, and general “deep state” issues. Likewise, many modern problems arise exactly because there already is an extreme political and/or ideological influence, which would be reduced by the occasional “house cleaning”.
To boot, in as far as the conflicts at hand relate to politics, as opposed to trustworthiness, competence, and other more personal factors affecting ability to “do the job”, then either (a) the post has an inherently political nature (as with e.g. cabinet posts) and should underlie political influence, or (b) steps need to be taken to ensure that the political positions/whatnots of the holder of the post are rendered irrelevant to the degree possible, after which there is unlikely to be a wish to make personnel changes for political reasons. Should sufficient steps for (b) be impossible, and/or a judgment whether (a) or (b) applies be too tricky, it would certainly still be legitimate to remove those who abuse their position and it is likely best to err on the side of (in the U.S.) the-POTUS-fires-and-hires. (Subject, of course, to whatever clearly established legal/constitutional restrictions that apply, e.g. that some appointment needs confirmation by congress.)
For such tricky cases, consider a position like the U.S. Attorney General or the head of the FBI. Ideally, these should be non-political, doing their job based on rational criteria relating to law, law enforcement, whatnot. In reality, this is unlikely to be realistic. With the Attorney General, e.g., a switch of POTUS will almost necessarily lead to a switch of position on many important legal issues, be it because different legal interpretations are made or because different priorities are held. (I do not say that this is a good thing—but this is how it is.) If the current Attorney General is not able or willing to adapt to this switch, problems will ensue. The head of the FBI is less exposed to unavoidable “political winds” and (b) would seem to apply; however, the experiences of Trump show how the FBI has engaged in partisan and political actions against him, in a manner that justify intervention. Looking deeper at history, J. Edgar Hoover held the office for half the 20th century and was consider-by-some to be more powerful than the respective POTUS for portions of that era. Now, what if a second Hoover were to arise, without democratic election, without “term limits”, and without sufficient control, including the right to fire, by the POTUS?
(With Hoover and the FBI, the exact years and status depend on how a predecessor organization of the FBI is counted. Going by Wikipedia, we have 1935–1972 for the FBI proper and 1924–1935 for the “Bureau of Investigation”.)
In both cases, it might be better if the problems could be solved by reducing the leeway for misbehavior—but how can this be done without simultaneously restricting the ability of these high-level actors to act with sufficient freedom to do their jobs? Chances are that a combination of freedom-while-holding-the-position with the ability to change the office holder is the better solution.
(Here, we see a recurring and much more general issue: The need to find a balance between cases in the extended “false positive” and “false negative” families and the complication that reducing the number of “false positives” almost invariably increases the number of “false negatives”—and vice versa. Here, e.g., too strict limits would unduly hinder those who do perform their jobs correctly, while too lax limits would enable those who do not to work mischief.)
Looking at lower level employees, it is also hard to see how more than some amount of money and an explicitly honorable discharge could be awarded by the courts. If in doubt, these hardly have a right to complain if they are given money without having to perform work, as the right to actually and specifically perform work is highly dubious. (In any case that I can actually think of, off the top of my head, almost nonsensical.) I could see how someone like a Leftist activist or a spy for a foreign country might want to continue work to further his causes, but this is by no means a legitimate reason. I could also see how, in some cases, the employee at hand might fear that a particular piece of work might not be completed in a satisfactory manner, but that is, at the end of the day, the problem of the employer and, if relevant, those who are disadvantaged by the unsatisfactory manner. For these disadvantaged, some limited leeway might be given in exceptional cases, but not to the fired employee.
To give specific examples is tricky, because there are always different perspectives and potentially conflicting and legitimate concerns. (And I mention the possibility less because I see concrete examples and more for the sake of completeness/with an eye at what I might have missed.) However, consider something like a tricky social-service case, where (a) the citizen at hand has a long and trust-filled relationship with the case worker, (b) legitimate concerns for considerable and irreparable harm from a switch of case worker exists, e.g. because of complications from mental-health issues, and (c) the additional amount of work and/or time needed is sufficiently short (be it at all or until the risk of harm is lowered). Then the citizen (not the case worker!) could conceivably have some right to insist on continuing with the same case worker, say, through an injunction that the case worker may temporarily remain. (Of course, provided that the case worker is willing.)
Such cases, however, are bound to be very rare—possibly, too rare to bother with.
I note that the road chosen in Germany, with its employment-for-life civil servants (in the “Beamte” category), has proved particularly harmful, as it not only leads to the preferential hiring of the lazy and incompetent (because these are disproportionately likely to apply) but also makes it impossible to remove all but the worst liabilities, be it the lazy, the incompetent, the citizen-hostile, whatnot. More, Beamte know that they can act almost with impunity (including that a typical complaint by a citizen against a Beamte will usually be pointless) and many take advantage of this.
Here the opposite road must be taken: Those who, in whatever form, exercise governmental power, be it as decision makers or as executors, must underlie stricter controls and consequences than others, not, as is so often the case in various countries today, laxer. This the more so, the higher up in the hierarchy. Above a certain level, the principle should apply that “Caesar’s wife must be beyond suspicion” (where “suspicion” will typically be in the eyes of the POTUS resp. his local equivalent, not, as might have been the case with Caesar’s wife, the court of public opinion.) What level should form the border to such strictness, I leave unstated, but I do view the likes of the aforementioned Attorney General and the head of the FBI as on or above that level.
Finally, I note that the question of at-will employment is often beside the point, because of misbehavior and other “for cause” reasons. (Except to the degree that such reasons might need to be provable in a later court case.) Even in countries like Sweden and Germany, with its extremely restrictive employment laws and great adversity to at-will employment, allow a firing “for cause” and, if the cause is important enough, even in short order.
The above discussion is to some degree contingent on limits on the reign of the president or other figure-in-charge. In the U.S., notably, there are elections every four years and a limitation to two terms per POTUS. In a system where far longer periods of rule are likely, the opposite might apply, because a near-irremovable head of government/state/whatnot is problematic and both a limit on his powers and the ability of others to serve as counterweights (without fear of removal) can be beneficial.
(A hitch in real life is that irremovable leaders also tend to have greater powers of removal of their opponents—not lesser.)
The above deals with firings. A parallel question is when and whether an employee should be able to leave employment “at will”. For positions like the above, this question is quite tricky, because a too abrupt leaving can also do great damage—and the more so, when the process for replacement can include congressional hearings and confirmations that potentially take weeks or months.
However, on the balance, I suspect that is for the best for the employer to err on the side of permissiveness, should an employee wish to leave even somewhat abruptly, even in light of contractual or other formal obligations, and unless the foreseeable damage is unconscionably large. This for two reasons: Firstly, an employee who is denied exit is unlikely to perform very well, both because his wish to exit is often rooted in factors like demotivation in the first place and because the denial, it self, might have hurt his motivation. More, a sufficiently disgruntled employee might take the denial as cause to do harm. Secondly, the fact that a premature exit was, at all, requested could point to a lack of professionalism or otherwise be a sign that the employee was not right for the job to begin with. (Such “otherwise” does not necessarily show an absolute problem with the employee, although it is common. Other cases can include variations of “artistic differences”, a perfectly good square peg being misassigned to a round hole, and similar.) At the same time, if the employee does have a compelling case to leave that is not directly or indirectly related to his work, say, the need to take care of an ailing spouse, refusing him is increasingly harder to defend, the more compelling the case.
In most cases, an argument of symmetry also applies in that it is a fundamental unfairness if the employer can terminate an employment on shorter notice than the employee. If (!) the employer claims the right to terminate “at will”, then the same right should usually be extended to the employee. However, for sufficiently high-ranking positions and/or sufficiently political positions, which are the main topics on this page, some asymmetry is natural in light of factors like how much greater the damage to the country can be than to the individual (high-ranking and political) employee and that high-ranking employees are much more likely to have made a deliberate and informed choice while “having options” than low-ranking employees.
The above also deals with a context of politics, civil service, etc. The more general issue of at-will employment in private businesses/whatnot is similar in some parts, dissimilar in others. I might address it separately at some later juncture, but I do stress that I broadly favor it over the cumbersome limitations enforced in countries like Sweden and Germany, which seem to do more harm than good in the net.
At the same time as courts intervene, and/or lawfarers try to make them intervene, to prevent the use of executive power, we have quite a few cases of courts and/or lawfarers interfering with the democratic processes. Note e.g. (!) the spurious attempts to block Trump from at all being electable, the very disputable faith of Bolsanora (and the odd favoring of the much more dubious seeming Lula) in Brazil, and how the 2024 Romanian presidential elections were outright and, likely, spuriously, annulled by the courts and the possible winner was ultimately and very recently prevented from participating in the 2025 replacement elections. (Due to a multi-round election process, the Romanian results were not finalized at the time of the annulment.) Also note, if possibly without court involvement, the even more recent arrest of Ekrem İmamoğlu, a Turkish opposition leader, on what some claim are trumped up charges. (My own knowledge of the last case moves on the headline level and I make no own claim.)
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