Opinion ID: 76762
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Structural Principles and the Separation of Powers

Text: 44 Where a provision of the Constitution is silent on a matter, we must also read that provision so that it will harmonize with other constitutional provisions. See Nevada v. Hall, 440 U.S. 410, 433, 99 S.Ct. 1182, 59 L.Ed.2d 416 (1979) ([W]hen the Constitution is ambiguous or silent on a particular issue, this Court has often relied on notions of a constitutional plan—the implicit ordering of relationships within the federal system necessary to make the Constitution a workable governing charter and to give each provision within that document the full effect intended by the Framers.). If the Constitution did not contain any other provisions concerning the appointment of federal officers, it might be possible to conclude with the majority that a President could fill a vacancy created during one recess with an appointment made during a subsequent recess. It might even be possible to conclude that a President could fill a vacancy created during a recess at any future time, including when the Senate is in active session. But the Constitution does contain another provision concerning the appointment of federal officers. The Constitution states that the President 45 shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States. 46 U.S. Const., art. II, § 2, cl. 2. Thus, the Constitution gives to the Senate the power to withhold its consent to any nomination to a federal office made by a President. By interpreting the Recess Appointments Clause to allow a President to fill a vacancy created during one recess with an appointment made during a subsequent recess, we are effectively allowing a President to side-step the Senate's advice-and-consent role even where the Senate is not disabled from fulfilling that role—which, I note again at the risk of repetition, was and still is the only reason for creating a recess appointment power. 47 I do not believe that the Constitution permits a President to frustrate in this way the careful separation of powers intended by the framers. In between a recess during which the vacancy was created and a recess during which it is filled, the Senate would be in active session and would be perfectly capable of carrying out its advice-and-consent responsibilities. There would be no reason why the Senate would not in fact carry out those responsibilities —unless, of course, it chose not to give its consent to a particular candidate. Yet the Senate's refusal to consent to a presidential nomination does not justify the President in circumventing the text and structure of the Constitution. 48 Considering that the Recess Appointments Clause was intended to enable the President to fill vacancies only when the Senate was disabled from acting, and in light of the role that Article II gives the Senate in approving nominations to federal offices, there must be some more meaningful limit on the President's power to make a recess appointment than the two the majority proposes (i.e., that the Senate be in recess and that there be a vacancy to fill). The only plausible limit—as well as the most obvious one—is to require the President to fill a vacancy during the same recess in the course of which it happens. This reading is supported not only by considerations of constitutional purpose and structure, but also by the language of the Recess Appointments Clause, which suggests that the context in which the recess appointment power is triggered—the happening of a vacancy during a particular recess—also defines the limits of the recess appointment power. See The Federalist No. 67, at 391 (Alexander Hamilton) (Isaac Kramnick ed., 1987) (The time within which the [recess appointment] power is to operate, `during the recess of the Senate,' and the duration of the appointments, `to the end of the next session' of that body, conspire to elucidate the sense of the provision ...).