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With the Mueller fiasco, the damage to the idea of a special counsel is complete, and that is a good thing. Long ago I served as law clerk to the panel of circuit court judges that selected “independent counsels” because the judge I clerked for, Roger Robb, was its senior member. As a special assistant to Attorneys General William Smith and Ed Meese, and a member of the White House Counsel’s Office under the estimable Fred Fielding, I saw firsthand how difficult it was for the Justice Department and the White House to deal with the bizarre idea of a prosecutor independent of everyone, an idea deeply at odds with the framers’ design for the executive branch. I’ve taught constitutional law for 25 years and always teach that the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the independent counsel statute that replaced the ad hoc special counsel arrangements of the Nixon era. But I also point out that, crucially, Congress decided not to renew that statute because of its malignant consequences.