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Page Number: 55.0

4 

TRUMP v. UNITED STATES 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

Cooley  ed. 1871)  (“[A]s  the  king  may  create  new  titles, so 
may he create new offices”).  That ability to create offices
raised many “concerns about the King’s ability to amass too 
much power”; the King could both create a multitude of of-
fices  and  then  fill  them  with  his  supporters.  J.  Mascott, 
Who Are “Officers of the United States”? 70 Stan. L. Rev. 
443, 492 (2018) (Mascott); see also G. Wood, The Creation 
of the American Republic 1776–1787, p. 143 (1969) (describ-
ing “the power of appointment to offices” as “the most insid-
ious  and  powerful  weapon  of  eighteenth-century  despot-
ism”);  T.  Paine,  Common  Sense  (1776),  reprinted  in  The 
Great  Works  of  Thomas  Paine  11  (1877)  (explaining  that 
“the crown . . . derives its whole consequence merely from 
being the giver of places and pensions”).  In fact, one of the 
grievances  raised  by  the  American  colonists  in  declaring 
their independence was that the King “ha[d] erected a mul-
titude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to 
harass our people and eat out their substance.”  Declaration 
of Independence ¶12.  The Founders thus drafted the Con-
stitution with “evidently a great inferiority in the power of
the President, in this particular, to that of the British king.”
The Federalist No. 69, at 421. 

The Founders broke from the monarchial model by giving 
the President the power to fill offices (with the Senate’s ap-
proval), but not the power to create offices.  They did so by
“imposing the constitutional requirement that new officer 
positions  be  ‘established  by  Law’  rather  than  through  a 
King-like custom of the head magistrate unilaterally creat-
ing  new  offices.”  Mascott  492–493  (footnote  omitted);  see
also 1 Annals of Cong. 581–582 (1789) (“The powers relative 
to offices are partly Legislative and partly Executive.  The 
Legislature creates the office, defines the powers, limits its
duration, and annexes a compensation”); see also ibid. (de-
scribing the power to “designat[e] the man to fill the office”
as “of an Executive nature”).  The Constitution thus “giv[es]