Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/573/12-1281/concur4.html
Timestamp: 2018-04-25 18:26:25
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Matched Legal Cases: ['§5', '§7', '§4', '§3', '§3345', '§8', '§3', '§2', '§1761', '§56', '§5503', '§5503', '§5503']

Nat'l Labor Relations Bd. v. Canning, (Concurrence) :: 573 U.S. ___ (2014) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center
Justia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 573 › Nat'l Labor Relations Bd. v. Canning › Concurrence
First, the Constitution’s core, government-structuring provisions are no less critical to preserving liberty than are the later adopted provisions of the Bill of Rights. Indeed, “[s]o convinced were the Framers that liberty of the person inheres in structure that at first they did not consider a Bill of Rights necessary.” Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U. S. 417, 450 (1998) (Kennedy, J., concurring). Those structural provisions reflect the founding generation’s deep conviction that “checks and balances were the foundation of a structure of government that would protect liberty.” Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U. S. 714, 722 (1986) . It is for that reason that “the claims of individuals—not of Government departments—have been the principal source of judicial decisions concerning separation of powers and checks and balances.” Bond v. United States, 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 10); see, e.g., Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Bd., 561 U. S. 477 (2010) ; Clinton, supra; Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U. S. 211 (1995) ; Bowsher, supra; INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S. 919 (1983) ; Northern Pipeline Constr. Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., 458 U. S. 50 (1982) . Those decisions all rest on the bedrock principle that “the constitutional structure of our Government” is designed first and foremost not to look after the interests of the respective branches, but to “protec[t] individual liberty.” Bond, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 11).
Second and relatedly, when questions involving the Constitution’s government-structuring provisions are presented in a justiciable case, it is the solemn responsibility of the Judicial Branch “ ‘to say what the law is.’ ” Zivotofsky v. Clinton, 566 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 7) (quoting Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803)). This Court does not defer to the other branches’ resolution of such controversies; as Justice Kennedy has previously written, our role is in no way “lessened” because it might be said that “the two political branches are adjusting their own powers between themselves.” Clinton, supra, at 449 (concurring opinion). Since the separation of powers exists for the protection of individual liberty, its vitality “does not depend” on “whether ‘the encroached-upon branch approves the encroachment.’ ” Free Enterprise Fund, supra, at 497 (quoting New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144, 182 (1992) ); see also Freytag v. Commissioner, 501 U. S. 868 –880 (1991); Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority v. Citizens for Abatement of Aircraft Noise, Inc., 501 U. S. 252 –277 (1991). Rather, policing the “enduring structure” of constitutional government when the political branches fail to do so is “one of the most vital functions of this Court.” Public Citizen v. Department of Justice, 491 U. S. 440, 468 (1989) (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment).
Of course, where a governmental practice has been open, widespread, and unchallenged since the early days of the Republic, the practice should guide our interpretation of an ambiguous constitutional provision. See, e.g., Alden v. Maine, 527 U. S. 706 –744 (1999); Bowsher, supra, at 723–724; Myers v. United States, 272 U. S. 52 –175 (1926); see also Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579, 610 (1952) (Frankfurter, J., concurring) (arguing that “a systematic, unbroken, executive practice, long pursued to the knowledge of the Congress and never before questioned” should inform interpretation of the “Executive Power” vested in the President); Rutan v. Republican Party of Ill., 497 U. S. 62 , and n. 1 (1990) (Scalia, J., dissenting). But “ ‘[p]ast practice does not, by itself, create power.’ ” Medellín v. Texas, 552 U. S. 491, 532 (2008) (quoting Dames & Moore v. Regan, 453 U. S. 654, 686 (1981) ). That is a necessary corollary of the principle that the political branches cannot by agreement alter the constitutional structure. Plainly, then, a self-aggrandizing practice adopted by one branch well after the founding, often challenged, and never before blessed by this Court—in other words, the sort of practice on which the majority relies in this case—does not relieve us of our duty to interpret the Constitution in light of its text, structure, and original understanding.
Ignoring our more recent precedent in this area, which is extensive, the majority relies on The Pocket Veto Case, 279 U. S. 655, 689 (1929) , for the proposition that when interpreting a constitutional provision “regulating the relationship between Congress and the President,” we must defer to the settled practice of the political branches if the provision is “ ‘ “in any respect of doubtful meaning.” ’ ” Ante, at 7; see ante, at 8, 16, 23, 33. The language the majority quotes from that case was pure dictum. The Pocket Veto Court had to decide whether a bill passed by the House and Senate and presented to the President less than 10 days before the adjournment of the first session of a particular Congress, but neither signed nor vetoed by the President, became a law. Most of the opinion analyzed that issue like any other legal question and concluded that treating the bill as a law would have been inconsistent with the text and structure of the Constitution. Only near the end of the opinion did the Court add that its conclusion was “confirmed” by longstanding Presidential practice in which Congress appeared to have acquiesced. 279 U. S., at 688–689. We did not suggest that the case would have come out differently had the longstanding practice been otherwise.[1]
To avoid the absurd results that follow from its collo-quial reading of “the Recess,” the majority is forced to declare that some intra-session breaks—though undisputedly within the phrase’s colloquial meaning—are simply “too short to trigger the Recess Appointments Clause.” Ante, at 21. But it identifies no textual basis whatsoever for limiting the length of “the Recess,” nor does it point to any clear standard for determining how short is too short. It is inconceivable that the Framers would have left the circumstances in which the President could exercise such a significant and potentially dangerous power so utterly indeterminate. Other structural provisions of the Constitution that turn on duration are quite specific: Neither House can adjourn “for more than three days” without the other’s consent. Art. I, §5, cl. 4. The President must return a passed bill to Congress “within ten Days (Sundays excepted),” lest it become a law. Id., §7, cl. 2. Yet on the majority’s view, when the first Senate considered taking a 1-month break, a 3-day weekend, or a half-hour siesta, it had no way of knowing whether the President would be constitutionally authorized to appoint officers in its absence. And any officers appointed in those circumstances would have served under a cloud, unable to determine with any degree of confidence whether their appointments were valid.[3]
As for breaks of 10 or more days: We are presumably to infer that such breaks do not trigger any “presumpt[ion]” against recess appointments, but does that mean the President has an utterly free hand? Or can litigants seek invalidation of an appointment made during a 10-day break by pointing to an absence of “unusual” or “urgent” circumstances necessitating an immediate appointment, albeit without the aid of a “presumpt[ion]” in their favor? Or, to put the question as it will present itself to lawyers in the Executive Branch: Can the President make an appointment during a 10-day break simply to overcome “political opposition in the Senate” despite the absence of any “national catastrophe,” even though it “go[es] without saying” that he cannot do so during a 9-day break? Who knows? The majority does not say, and neither does the Constitution.[4]
Even if the many questions raised by the majority’s failure to articulate a standard could be answered, alarger question would remain: If the Constitution’s text empowers the President to make appointments during any break in the Senate’s proceedings, by what right does the majority subject the President’s exercise of that power to vague, court-crafted limitations with no textual basis? The majority claims its temporal guideposts are informed by executive practice, but a President’s self-restraint cannot “bind his successors by diminishing their powers.” Free Enterprise Fund, 561 U. S., at 497; cf. Clinton v. Jones, 520 U. S. 681, 718 (1997) (Breyer, J., concurring in judgment) (“voluntary actions” by past Presidents “tel[l] us little about what the Constitution commands”).
More importantly, during those eight decades, Congress must have taken thousands of breaks that were three days or shorter. On the majority’s reading, every one of those breaks would have been within the Clause’s text—the majority’s newly minted limitation not yet having been announced. Yet there is no record of anyone, ever, having so much as mentioned the possibility that the recess-appointment power was activated during those breaks. That would be surprising indeed if the text meant what the majority thinks it means. Cf. Printz v. United States, 521 U. S. 898 –908 (1997).
The first intra-session recess appointments in our his-tory almost certainly were made by President Andrew John-son in 1867 and 1868.[5] That was, of course, a period of dramatic conflict between the Executive and Congress that saw the first-ever impeachment of a sitting President. The Solicitor General counts 57 intra-session recess appointments during those two years. App. to Brief for Petitioner 1a–9a. But the precise nature and historical understanding of many of those appointments is subject to debate. See, e.g., Brief for Constitutional Law Scholars as Amici Curiae 23–24; Rappaport, Nonoriginalism 27–33. It seems likely that at least 36 of the 57 appointments were made with the understanding that they took place during a recess between sessions. See id., at 27–31.
“[T]he Constitution and laws make it clear that in our legislative practice an adjournment during a session of Congress means a merely temporary suspension of business from day to day . . . whereas the recess means the period after the final adjournment of Congress for the session, and before the next session begins. . . . It is this period following the final adjournment for the session which is the recess during which the President has power to fill vacancies . . . . Any intermediate temporary adjournment is not such recess, although it may be a recess in the general and ordinary use of that term.” Id., at 601.[6]
It is necessary to skip over the first 13 decades of our Nation’s history in order to find a Presidential legal ad-viser arguably embracing the majority’s interpretation of “the Recess.” In 1921 President Harding’s Attorney General, Harry Daugherty, advised Harding that he could make recess appointments while the Senate stood adjourned for 28 days during the session because “the term ‘recess’ must be given a practical construction.” 33 Op. Atty. Gen. 20, 25. Daugherty acknowledged Knox’s 1901 opinion to the contrary, id., at 21, but he (committing the same fallacy as today’s majority) thought the 1905 Judiciary Committee report had come to the opposite conclusion, id., at 23–24. He also recognized the fundamental flaw in this interpretation: that it would be impossible to “accurately dra[w]” a line between intra-session breaks that constitute “the Recess” and those that do not. Id., at 25. But he thought the absence of a standard gave the President “discretion to determine when there is a real and genuine recess.” Ibid. While a “palpable abuse of discretion might subject his appointment to review,” Daugherty thought that “[e]very presumption [should] be indulged in favor of the validity of whatever action he may take.” Ibid.[7]
As the majority concedes, “the most natural meaning of ‘happens’ as applied to a ‘vacancy’ . . . is that the vacancy ‘happens’ when it initially occurs.” Ante, at 22. The majority adds that this meaning is most natural “to a modern ear,” ibid., but it fails to show that founding-era ears heard it differently. “Happen” meant then, as it does now, “[t]o fall out; to chance; to come to pass.” 1 Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language 913. Thus, a vacancy that happened during the Recess was most reasonably understood as one that arose during the recess. It was, of course, possible in certain contexts for the word “happen” to mean “happen to be” rather than “happen to occur,” as in the idiom “it so happens.” But that meaning is not at all natural when the subject is a vacancy, a state of affairs that comes into existence at a particular moment in time.[8]
If, however, the Clause had allowed the President to fill all pre-existing vacancies during the recess by granting commissions that would last throughout the following session, it would have been impossible to regard it—as the Framers plainly did—as a mere codicil to the Constitution’s principal, power-sharing scheme for filling federal offices. On the majority’s reading, the President would have had no need ever to seek the Senate’s advice and consent for his appointments: Whenever there was a fair prospect of the Senate’s rejecting his preferred nominee, the President could have appointed that individual unilaterally during the recess, allowed the appointment to expire at the end of the next session, renewed the appointment the following day, and so on ad infinitum. (Circumvention would have been especially easy if, as the majority also concludes, the President was authorized to make such appointments during any intra-session break of more than a few days.) It is unthinkable that such an obvious means for the Executive to expand its power would have been overlooked during the ratification debates.[9]
Early Congresses seem to have shared Randolph’s and Lee’s view. A statute passed by the First Congress authorized the President to appoint customs inspectors “with the advice and consent of the Senate” and provided that “if the appointment . . . shall not be made during the present session of Congress, the President . . . is hereby empowered to make such appointments during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session.” Act of Mar. 3, 1791, §4, 1Stat. 200. That authorization would have been superfluous if the Recess Appointments Clause had been understood to apply to pre-existing vacancies. We have recognized that an action taken by the First Congress “provides ‘contemporaneous and weighty evidence’ of the Constitution’s meaning.” Bowsher, 478 U. S., at 723–724. And other statutes passed in the early years of the Republic contained similar authorizations. See App. to Brief for Respondent Noel Canning 1a–17a.[11]
Also illuminating is the way the Third Congress interpreted the Constitution’s Senate Vacancies Clause, which uses language similar to that of the Recess Appointments Clause. Before the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment, the Constitution provided that “if Vacancies [in the Senate] happen by Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature.” Art. I, §3, cl. 2. Senator George Read of Delaware resigned in December 1793; the state legislature met in January and February 1794; and the Governor appointed Kensey Johns to fill the seat in March 1794. The Senate refused to seat Johns, resolving that he was “not entitled to a seat in the Senate of the United States; a session of the Legislature of the said State having intervened, between the resignation . . . and the appointment.” 4 Annals of Cong. 77–78 (1794). It is thus clear that the phrase “happen . . . during the Recess” in the Senate Vacancies Clause was understood to refer to vacancies that arose, not merely existed, during the recess in which the appointment was made. It is not apparent why the nearly identical language of the Recess Appointments Clause would have been understood differently.
Wirt’s argument is doubly flawed. To begin, the Constitution provides ample means, short of rewriting its text, for dealing with the hypothetical dilemma Wirt posed. Congress can authorize “acting” officers to perform the duties associated with a temporarily vacant office—and has done that, in one form or another, since 1792. See 5 U. S. C. §3345; Act of May 8, 1792, ch. 37, §8, 1Stat. 281; 705 F. 3d, at 511; Rappaport, Original Meaning 1514–1517. And on “extraordinary Occasions” the President can call the Senate back into session to consider a nomination. Art. II, §3. If the Framers had thought those options insufficient and preferred to authorize the President to make recess appointments to fill vacancies arising late in the session, they would have known how to do so. Massachusetts, for example, had authorized its Governor to make certain recess appointments “in case a vacancy shall happen . . . in the recess of the General Court [i.e., the state legislature], or at so late a period in any session of the same Court, that the vacancy . . . shall not be supplied in the same session thereof.” 1783 Mass. Acts ch. 12, in Acts and Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 523 (1890) (emphasis added).
In 1830, Attorney General Berrien disagreed with Wirt when he wrote that “[i]f the vacancy exist during the session of the Senate, . . . the President cannot appoint during the recess.” 2 Op. Atty. Gen. 333, 334. Two years later, Attorney General Taney endorsed Wirt’s view al-though doing so was, as he acknowledged, unnecessary to resolve the issue before him: whether the President could, during the recess, fill a vacancy resulting from the expiration of a prior recess appointment at the end of the Senate’s session. 2 Op. Atty Gen. 525, 528 (1832). Addressing the same issue in 1841, Attorney General Legaré appeared to believe the dispositive question was whether the office could be said to have “becom[e] vacant” during the recess. 3 Op. Atty. Gen. 673, 674. And in 1845, Attorney General Mason thought it “well established” that “[i]f vacancies are known to exist during the session of the Senate, and nominations are not then made, they cannot be filled by executive appointments in the recess.” 4 Op. Atty. Gen. 361, 363.[15]
The amendment was adopted by the Senate, ibid., and after passing the House became the Pay Act, which provided that “no money shall be paid . . . out of the Treasury, as salary, to any person appointed during the recess of the Senate, to fill a vacancy . . . which . . . existed while the Senate was in session.” Act of Feb. 9, 1863, §2, 12Stat. 646 (codified at Rev. Stat. §1761; subsequently codified as amended at 5 U. S. C. §56 (1925–1926 ed.)).
The majority finds it highly significant that in 1940, Congress created a few carefully limited exceptions to the Pay Act’s prohibition on paying recess appointees who filled pre-recess vacancies. See Act of July 11, 1940, ch. 580, 54Stat. 751, now codified with nonsubstantive amendments at 5 U. S. C. §5503. Under the current version of the Act, “[p]ayment for services may not be made from the Treasury of the United States to an individual appointed during a recess of the Senate to fill a vacancy” that “existed while the Senate was in session” unless either the vacancy arose, or a different individual’s nomination to fill the vacancy was rejected, “within 30 days before the end of the session”; or a nomination was pending before the Senate at the end of the session, and the individual nominated was not himself a recess appointee. §5503(a)(1)–(3). And if the President fills a pre-recess vacancy under one of the circumstances specified in the Act, the law requires that he submit a nomination for that office to the Senate “not later than 40 days after the beginning of the next session.” §5503(b).
The majority, however, finds it significant that in two small “random sample[s]” of contemporary recess appointments—24 since 1981 and 21 since 2000—the bulk of the appointments appear to have filled pre-existing vacancies. Ante, at 29. Based on that evidence, the majority thinks it “a fair inference that a large proportion of the recess appointments in the history of the Nation have filled pre-existing vacancies.” Ibid. The extrapolation of that sweeping conclusion from a small set of recent data does not bear even the slightest scrutiny. The majority ignores two salient facts: First, from the founding until the mid-19th century, the President’s authority to make such appointments was far from settled even within the Executive Branch. Second, from 1863 until 1940, it was illegal to pay any recess appointee who filled a pre-recess va-cancy, which surely discouraged Presidents from making, and nominees from accepting, such appointments. Consequently, there is no reason to assume that the majority’s sampling—even if it accurately reflects practices during the last three decades—is at all typical of practices that prevailed throughout “the history of the Nation.”[17]
1 The other cases cited by the majority in which we have afforded significant weight to historical practice, at 8, are consistent with the principles described above. Nearly all involved venerable and unchallenged practices, and constitutional provisions that were either deeply ambiguous or plainly supportive of the practice. See v. , –681, and n. 8, 686 (1981) (citing Presidential practice dating from 1799 and never questioned by Congress to inform meaning of “Executive Power”); , –119 (1925) (citing unchallenged Presidential practice dating from 1841 as support for a construction of the pardon power based on the “common law,” the “history of the clause in the Convention,” and “the ordinary meaning of its words”); v. , –471, 474 (1915) (citing Presidential practice dating from “an early period in the history of the government,” “uniformly and repeatedly acquiesced in” by Congress and previously upheld by this Court, to establish “a recognized administrative power of the Executive in the management of the public lands”); v. , –35 (1892) (citing method of choosing Presidential electors prevalent among the States “from the formation of the government until now,” as to the constitutionality of which “ ‘no question ha[d] ever arisen,’ ” in support of construction consistent with the constitutional text and its drafting history); v. , 4 Wheat. 316, 401–402 (1819) (citing power “exercised by the first Congress elected under the present constitution,” “recognized by many successive legislatures, and . . . acted upon by the judicial department,” in support of the conclusion that the Necessary and Proper Clause allowed Congress to incorporate a bank); v. , 1 Cranch 299, 309 (1803) (citing practice that “commence[d] with the organization of the judicial system” in rejecting challenge to Supreme Court Justices’ riding circuit). Even v. , , which concluded that the constitutional text did not prohibit judges from undertaking extrajudicial duties and found “additional evidence” for that conclusion in a longstanding practice that it acknowledged had been “controversial,” emphasized that it was relying on “contemporaneous practice by the Founders themselves” that had been “frequent and continuing” since ratification. at 397–400.
2 The majority claims that “the phrase ‘the recess’ was used to refer to intra-session recesses at the time of the founding,” at 10, but it offers strikingly little support for that assertion. It first cites a letter from George Washington that is quite obviously an example of imprecise, colloquial usage. See 3 Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, p. 76 (M. Farrand rev. 1966) (“I had put my carriage in the hands of a workman to be repaired and had not the means of mooving [sic] during the recess”). It next cites an example from the New Jersey Legislature that simply reflects that body’s practice of dividing its time not only into “sessions” but also into distinct, formal “sittings” within each session, with “the recess” denoting the period between sittings. See Brief for Respondent Noel Canning 23; see also Natelson 207. Finally, the majority cites three pages from the Solicitor General’s brief without acknowledging the arguments offered in response to the Solicitor General’s few supposed counterexamples. See, Brief for Respondent Noel Canning 21–24; Natelson 222, n. 120.
3 The majority insists that “the most likely reason the Framers did not place a textual floor underneath the word ‘recess’ is that they did not foresee the for one” because they did not anticipate that intra-session breaks “would become lengthier and more significant than inter-session ones.” at 19. The majority’s logic escapes me. The Framers’ supposed failure to anticipate “length[y]” intra-session breaks might explain why (as I maintain) they did not bother to authorize recess appointments during intra-session breaks at all; but it cannot explain why (as the majority holds) they would have enacted a text that authorizes appointments during intra-session breaks—even the short ones the majority says they anticipate—without placing a temporal limitation on that power.
4 The majority erroneously suggests that the “lack of a textual floor raises a problem that plagues” both interpretations of “the Recess.” at 19. Not so. If the Clause is given its plain meaning, the President cannot make recess appointments during the session but can make recess appointments during any break sessions, no matter how short. Contra the majority, that is not a “problem.” True, the recess-appointment power applies even during very short inter-session breaks. But inter-session breaks typically occur at most a few times a year, and the recess-appointment power is of limited utility during very short inter-session breaks since, as explained below, the President can fill only those vacancies that arise during the break. See Part III, . Of course, as the Senate Judiciary Committee has argued, the break must be actual and not “constructive”; the Senate must adjourn for some measurable period of time between the two sessions. See at 20–22. But the requirement that there actually a recess does not involve anywhere near the level of indeterminacy entailed by the majority’s requirement that the recess be (or the circumstances unusual enough), as determined by a court, to trigger the recess-appointment power.
6 The majority dismisses Knox’s opinion as overly formalistic because it “relied heavily upon the use of the word ‘the’ ” in the phrase “the Recess.” at 13. It did not. As the passage quoted above makes clear, Knox was relying on the common understanding of what “the Recess” meant in the context of marking out legislative time.
7 I say Daugherty “arguably” embraced the majority’s view because he may have been endorsing, not the majority’s position, but the intermediate view that reads both “the Recess” and “the next Session” in functional terms, so that intra-session appointments would last only until the next intra-session break. See at 10; Rappaport, Nonoriginalism 34–35.
8 Despite initially admitting that the text “does not naturally favor” its interpretation, the majority halfheartedly suggests that the “ ‘happen to be’ ” reading may be admissible when the subject, like “vacancy,” denotes a “continuing state.” at 22–23. That suggestion distorts ordinary English usage. It is indeed natural to say that an ongoing activity or event, like a war, a parade, or a financial crisis, is “happening” for as long as it continues. But the same is not true when the subject is a settled state of affairs, like death, marriage, or vacancy, all of which “happen” when they come into being.
9 The majority insists that “character and politics” will ordinarily prevent the President from circumventing the Senate, and that the Senate has “political resources” to respond to attempts at circumvention. at 25. Neither character nor politics prevented Theodore Roosevelt from proclaiming a fictitious recess lasting an “infinitesimal fraction of a second.” In any event, the Constitution does not entrust the Senate’s role in the appointments process to the vagaries of character and politics. See, v. , –880 (1991).
10 The majority does not deny that Lee took those positions, but it claims he also “later informed [Thomas] Jefferson that, in the Adams administration, ‘whenever an office became vacant, so short a time before Congress rose, as not to give an opportunity of enquiring for a proper character, they let it lie always till recess.’ ” at 27 (quoting Letter from Jefferson to Wilson Cary Nicholas (Jan. 26, 1802), in 36 Papers of Thomas Jefferson 433 (B. Oberg ed. 2009) (hereinafter 1802 Jefferson Letter)). Assuming Lee in fact made the statement attributed to him by Jefferson, and further assuming that Lee endorsed the constitutionality of the practice described in that statement (which Jefferson does not say), that practice could only have been regarded as a pragmatic exception to the general view of the Clause that Lee, like Randolph, espoused. And the practice must not have been extensive, since the Solicitor General has been unable to identify even a single appointment made by Adams that filled a pre-recess vacancy. See at 36.
11 The majority suggests that these statutes may have reflected, not a belief that the recess-appointment power was limited to vacancies arising during the recess, but a “separate” belief that the power could not be used for “new offices” created by Congress and not previously filled. at 30. But the latter view (which the majority does not endorse) was inseparably linked with the former (which the majority rejects), as is made clear by the very source the majority cites. See Letter from Alexander Hamilton to James McHenry (May 3, 1799), in 23 Papers of Alexander Hamilton 94 (H. Syrett ed. 1976) (“[T]he power to fill the vacancy is not the power to make an original appointment. The phrase ‘Which may have happened’ serves to confirm this construction. . . . [I]ndependent of the authority of a special law, the President cannot fill a vacancy which happens during a session of the Senate”); see also 2 Op. Atty. Gen., at 334 (“If the vacancy exist during the session of the Senate, as in the first creation of an office by law, it has been held that the President cannot appoint during the recess, unless he is specially authorized so to do by law”); W. Rawle, A View of the Constitution of the United States of America 163 (2d ed. 1829) (reprint 2009) (“It has been held by [the Senate], that if new offices are created by congress, the president cannot, after the adjournment of the senate, make appointments to fill them. The vacancies do not during the recess of the senate”).
12 See also Letter from Adams to James McHenry (April 16, 1799), in 8 Works of John Adams 632 (C. Adams ed. 1853) (proposing the appointments); Letter from Adams to McHenry (May 16, 1799), in at 647 (agreeing to “suspend [the appointments] for the present, perhaps till the meeting of the Senate”). Before advising Adams, McHenry also consulted Alexander Hamilton, who agreed that the appointments would be unlawful. See Letter from McHenry to Hamilton (Apr. 26, 1799), in 23 Papers of Alexander Hamilton, at 69, 70 (“It would seem that, under this Constitutional power, the President cannot alone . . . fill up vacancies that may happen during a session of the senate”); Letter from Hamilton to McHenry (May 3, 1799), in at 94 (“It is clear, that independent of the authority of a special law, the President cannot fill a vacancy which happens during a session of the Senate”).
15 A year later Mason, like Taney and Legaré before him, concluded that when a recess appointment expired at the end of the Senate’s session, the President could fill the resulting vacancy during the ensuing recess. In reaching that conclusion, Mason reiterated that the recess-appointment power “depends on the happening of vacancies when the Senate is not in session” and said the vacancy at issue was “within the meaning of” the Clause because the happening of the vacancy and the termination of the session had “occurred .” 4 Op. Atty. Gen. 523, 526–527 (1846).
16 In the early 20th century, some Senators acceded to the majority’s reading of the Clause, as the majority is eager to point out, at 31. In 1904, Senator Tillman allowed that “the Senate ha[d] acquiesced” in the President’s use of the recess-appointment power to fill pre-existing vacancies, 38 Cong. Rec. 1606, though he also quoted at length from the 1863 Judiciary Committee report and said he did “not see how anybody can find any argument to controvert the position [the report] takes,” at 1608. And in 1916, Senators Robinson and Sutherland accepted the majority’s reading without analysis. 53 Cong. Rec. 4298. The reader can decide whether those statements by three Senators justify the assertion that the Senate “abandoned its hostility” to the broad reading, at 31.
17 The majority also notes that many of the recess appointments identified by the Solicitor General were made “within two weeks of the beginning of the recess,” which, according to the majority, “strongly suggests that many of the vacancies initially arose prior to the recess.” at 29. The inference is unwarranted, since there are many circumstances other than random chance that could cause a vacancy to arise early in the recess: For example, the prior officeholder may have been another recess appointee whose commission expired at the end of the Senate’s session, or he may have waited until the recess to resign so that his successor could be compensated without violating the Pay Act. In any event, the overwhelming majority of the intra-session recess appointments on the Solicitor General’s list occurred after 1945 and do not shed light on earlier practices.