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Page Number: 36

2 

LUCIA v. SEC 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

easy to grasp; the second, less so.  To be sure, to exercise 
“significant authority,” the person must wield considerable 
powers in comparison to the average person who works for 
the  Federal  Government.    As  this  Court  has  noted,  the 
vast  majority  of  those  who  work  for  the  Federal  Govern-
ment  are  not  “Officers  of  the  United  States.”    See  Free 
Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight 
Bd.,  561  U. S.  477,  506,  n.  9  (2010)  (indicating  that  well 
over  90%  of  those  who  render  services  to  the  Federal 
Government  and  are  paid  by  it  are  not  constitutional
officers).  But this Court’s decisions have yet to articulate 
the types of powers that will be deemed significant enough 
to constitute “significant authority.”

To  provide  guidance  to  Congress  and  the  Executive
Branch,  I  would  hold  that  one  requisite  component  of 
“significant authority” is the ability to make final, binding 
decisions  on  behalf  of  the  Government.    Accordingly,  a
person who merely advises and provides recommendations 
to an officer would not herself qualify as an officer. 

There is some historical support for such a requirement.
For  example,  in  1822,  the  Supreme  Judicial  Court  of
Maine  opined  in  the  “fullest  early  explication”  of  the 
meaning  of  an  “ ‘office,’ ”  that  “ ‘the  term  “office”  implies  a 
delegation  of  a  portion  of  the  sovereign  power  to,  and 
possession  of  it  by  the  person  filling  the  office,’ ”  that  “ ‘in 
its  effects[,]  . . .  will  bind  the  rights  of  others.’ ”    31  Op.
OLC  83  (quoting  3  Greenl.  (Me.)  481,  482).    In  1899,  a 
Report of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Repre-
sentatives  noted  that  “the  creation  and  conferring  of  an
office  involves  a  delegation  to  the  individual  of  . . .  sover-
eign functions,” i.e., “the power to . . . legislate, . . . execute
law,  or  . . .  hear  and  determine  judicially  questions  sub-
mitted.”  1  A.  Hinds,  Precedents  of  the  House  of  Repre-
sentatives  of  the  United  States  607  (1907).    Those  who 
merely  assist  others  in  exercising sovereign  functions  but 
who  do  not  have  the  authority  to  exercise  sovereign  pow-