berg80
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- Oct 28, 2017
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Trump’s Judicial Hero Would Have Hated His Recess Appointments Plan
That was scant reason to bypass the Senate, Justice Scalia said in 2014.
“Governing would be much simpler if the president could choose the people he wanted to fill certain offices without having to get a bunch of senators to agree,” he said. “But the point of the Constitution is not simply to make government run efficiently.”
The recess appointments clause is an anachronism, Justice Scalia said, a relic from an age in which travel involved horses and senators could be hard to find. These days, he said, “the only remaining practical use for the recess appointment power is the ignoble one of enabling presidents to circumvent the Senate’s role in the appointment process.”
Justice Scalia effectively said the basis for Mr. Trump’s plan — was lawless. “These new rules have no basis whatever in the Constitution,” he said. “They are just made up.”
“The court’s decision transforms the recess-appointment power from a tool carefully designed to fill a narrow and specific need,” Justice Scalia said in his written opinion, “into a weapon to be wielded by future presidents against future Senates.”
Justice Scalia even anticipated circumstances in which a president’s party has a Senate majority, as Republicans will for Mr. Trump. “Its members,” the justice said from the bench, “often are not motivated to resist encroachment by a president who is the leader of their own party.”
Trump’s Judicial Hero Would Have Hated His Recess Appointments Plan
Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative giant, said attempts to circumvent the Senate’s responsibility to vet nominees were “ignoble” and “just made up.”
