Opinion ID: 76762
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Plain Meaning of the Constitution

Text: 27 The first rule of constitutional interpretation is to look to the plain meaning of the Constitution's text. Solorio v. United States, 483 U.S. 435, 447, 107 S.Ct. 2924, 97 L.Ed.2d 364 (1987). See also Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat) 1, 188, 6 L.Ed. 23 (1824) (As men, whose intentions require no concealment, generally employ the words which most directly and aptly express the ideas they intend to convey, the enlightened patriots who framed our constitution, and the people who adopted it, must be understood to have employed words in their natural sense, and to have intended what they have said.) (Marshall, C.J.). 28 Under this rule, the plain meaning of the Recess Appointments Clause directly, expressly, and unambiguously requires that before a vacancy can be filled through the recess appointment power, that vacancy must have occurred during a Senate recess. 29 The majority argues that the recess power is valid to fill a vacancy already in existence at the time of the recess. According to the majority's reading, the Constitution does not say that a vacancy, to be filled, must be created during that recess. See Majority Order at 1226 (`Vacancies' Need Not Arise During the Recess in Order to be Filled). But that is precisely what the Constitution does say. The Recess Appointments Clause applies only to those Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate. U.S. Const., Art. 2, § 2, cl. 3 (emphasis added). 3 This language needs no interpretation. The text does not say that the President shall have the power to fill all vacancies that may exist during the Recess of the Senate. Instead, it uses the term happen, whose plain meaning, now as it was in the eighteenth century, is to take place; to occur, betide, befall. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1989). 4 A vacancy that may happen during the Recess of the Senate can only be a vacancy that takes place or occurs during the Recess of the Senate. It clearly cannot be a vacancy that happens while the Senate is in session. 30 The plain meaning of the term happen seems all the more ineluctable when one recalls that the 1787 Constitution included not one but two clauses concerning recess appointments. The original Article I contained a provision for the filling of Senate vacancies that read as follows: 31 [I]f Vacancies 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, which shall then fill such Vacancies. 32 U.S. Const., art. I, § 3, cl. 2, superseded by U.S. Const. amend. XVII. It seems difficult to imagine that the framers could have intended the term happen here to mean anything other than occur or take place given that the manner in which they envisioned a vacancy happening was by Resignation, or otherwise. That is to say, the framers seem to have contemplated that a vacancy would happen when a particular triggering event occurred— whether a resignation or other event (such as a sudden illness or death)—the timing of which event could be clearly said to fall during the Recess of the Senate. And since there is no reason why the Framers would have intended the term happen to mean one thing in Article I and something different in Article II, particularly where both articles relate to the same subject of recess appointments, the majority's reading of the Article II Recess Appointments Clause seems even more difficult to reconcile with the plain meaning of the Constitution. See Whitman v. National Bank of Oxford, 176 U.S. 559, 563, 20 S.Ct. 477, 44 L.Ed. 587 (1900) (The simplest and most obvious interpretation of a Constitution, if in itself sensible, is the most likely to be that meant by the people in its adoption.) (internal citation and quotations omitted); National Mut. Ins. Co. of D.C. v. Tidewater Transfer Co., 337 U.S. 582, 587-88, 69 S.Ct. 1173, 93 L.Ed. 1556 (1949) (holding that to classify the District of Columbia as a state would give the word state as used in Article III a meaning inconsistent with its use in the Constitution's other articles, and finding that such inconsistency in a single instrument is to be implied only where the context clearly requires it). 33 Thus, the question of when a vacancy must occur admits of very little ambiguity. Accordingly, the plain meaning rule compels the conclusion that the Constitution means what it says: the recess appointment power of Article II is good only for those vacancies that happen while the Senate is in recess. 5 34