Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-1434_ancf.pdf
Page Number: 30.0

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

3 

Opinion of GORSUCH, J. 

Execute the Laws, 104 Yale L. J. 541, 570–599 (1994); Law-
son, Appointments and Illegal Adjudication: The American 
Invents Act Through a Constitutional Lens, 26 Geo. Mason 
L. Rev. 26, 57–58 (2018).  The Appointments Clause, for ex-
ample, vests the President with the power to appoint “Of-
ficers of the United States” with “the Advice and Consent of 
the  Senate,”  and  to  appoint  “inferior  Officers  . . .  alone” 
when Congress authorizes him to do so.  Art. II, §2, cl. 2.

By  definition,  an  “ ‘inferior  officer’  . . .  has  a  superior.” 
Edmond v. United States, 520 U. S. 651, 662 (1997).  To be 
an “inferior” officer, then, one must be both “subordinate to 
a[n] officer in the Executive Branch” and “under the direct 
control  of  the  President”  through  a  “chain  of  command.” 
Morrison, 487 U. S., at 720–721 (Scalia, J., dissenting).  In 
this  way,  the  “text  and  structure  of  the  Appointments 
Clause”  require  a  “reference  to  hierarchy.”  Calabresi  & 
Lawson,  The  Unitary  Executive,  Jurisdiction  Stripping,
and the Hamdan Opinions: A Textualist Response to Jus-
tice  Scalia,  107  Colum.  L. Rev.  1002,  1018–1020  (2007).
Only  such  an  understanding  preserves,  as  Madison  de-
scribed it, the “chain of dependence,” where “the lowest of-
ficers, the middle grade, and the highest”—each and every 
one—“will depend, as they ought, on the President.”  1 An-
nals of Cong. 499 (Madison).  And where the President, in 
turn,  depends  “on  the community,”  so  that  “[t]he  chain of 
dependence”  finally  “terminates  in  the  supreme  body,
namely, in the people.”  Ibid. 

I agree with the Court, too, that the statutory regime be-
fore  us  breaks  this  chain  of  dependence.    In  the  America 
Invents  Act  of  2011  (AIA),  Congress  authorized  the  inter 
partes review (IPR) process, which permits anyone to file a 
petition asking the Patent and Trademark Office to “cancel” 
someone else’s patent.  35 U. S. C. §311.  Congress assigned
the power to decide an IPR proceeding to a specific group of
officials—the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).  Un-
der the AIA’s terms, three members from the PTAB—often,