The Fourth Amendment protects ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects.’ Nothing in that text vanishes because a citizen’s records happen to rest on a company’s servers.

Humphrey's Executor rested on the fiction that the FTC exercised no executive power — a fiction that was strained in 1935 and untenable today. The modern Commission promulgates rules carrying the force of law, prosecutes Americans through in-house adjudications, and sues on behalf of the United States under more than eighty statutes. That is the execution of law, and those who wield it must be accountable to the elected Chief Executive.

“By stripping Judge Newman of her judicial duties while leaving her nominally in office, the Federal Circuit has exercised a removal power the Constitution assigns exclusively to Congress."

In choosing Hikma v. Amarin, the Court has focused on a narrow question aligned with current concerns about drug pricing—while leaving unresolved deeper uncertainties in patent law that affect innovation across the entire economy.