A Discussion of Congressional Legal Issues
On a Lawfare Podcast this week, I spoke with Molly Reynolds of the Brookings Institution and Donald Sherman of Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington about congressional oversight, the confirmation process and the “recess appointments gambit” (as Molly has termed it) floated as a means of circumventing advice and consent for the incoming Trump administration.
Sure to be an instant Thanksgiving classic!
An interesting recess appointment issue has arisen in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Article VI, section 7, of the Virginia constitution provides that justices of the state supreme court, who serve for 12 year terms, “shall be chosen by the vote of a majority of the members elected to each house of the General Assembly.” Under Article V, section 7, the constitution also provides that “[t]he General Assembly shall, if it is in session, fill vacancies in all offices which are filled by election by that body.”
The governor, however, has the “power to fill vacancies in all offices of the Commonwealth for the filling of which the Constitution and laws make no other provision.” Va. Const., art. V, § 7. This includes making temporary appointments to fill supreme court vacancies when the General Assembly is not in session: “Gubernatorial appointments made to fill vacancies in offices which are filled by election by the General Assembly . . ., made during the recess of the General Assembly, shall expire at the end of thirty days after the commencement of the next session of the General Assembly.” Id.
These provisions came into play earlier this year when a sitting justice of the Virginia Supreme Court (LeRoy F. Millette, Jr.) announced his retirement effective at the end of July. Because the General Assembly was not in session, Governor McAuliffe recess appointed Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Jane Marum Roush to fill the vacancy on a temporary basis. No one disputes that this was within the governor’s power under the above-cited provisions.
Matters became more complicated, though, when McAuliffe called a special session of the General Assembly to consider revising the state’s congressional districting map, which had been struck down by the federal courts. See Va. Const., art. IV, § 6 (“The Governor may convene a special session of the General Assembly when, in his opinion, the interest of the Commonwealth may require . . . .”). The General Assembly convened on August 17, 2015, pursuant to the governor’s call.
Once the special session convened, the General Assembly undeniably had the power to elect a “permanent” (i.e.. for the remainder of the 12-year term) replacement for Justice Millette. Republicans in the legislature attempted to elect another judge to fill the seat, but this move was blocked in the senate. The senate then voted to adjourn sine die. The house, however, neither adjourned nor consented to the senate’s adjournment.
Everyone agrees that when the General Assembly convened on August 17, it commenced the “next session” of the General Assembly following Roush’s recess appointment. Thus, the thirty-day clock started on August 17, and Roush’s appointment expired on September 16.
The controversy centers on whether the senate’s vote to adjourn sine die has ended the General Assembly’s special session. If not, the General Assembly remains in session and retains the power and responsibility to fill the seat that Judge Roush had temporarily occupied.
This is the view of the speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates. In a letter to the governor, the speaker relies primarily on the following provision of the Virginia constitution: “Neither house shall, without the consent of the other, adjourn to another place, nor for more than three days.” See Va. const., art. IV, § 6. This “clear, unambiguous and emphatic” language, according to the speaker, establishes that the senate cannot unilaterally end the General Assembly’s session. Thus, the senate’s adjournment sine die was ineffective and the General Assembly remains in session. Under the speaker’s position, the General Assembly’s session would not end until both houses agree to adjourn or until “dissolution by the efflux of their time,” which would presumably occur at the beginning of the new legislative session in 2016. Cf. House Rules and Manual § 590 (Jefferson’s Manual of Parliamentary Practice).
The governor’s position, explained by his counsel Carlos L. Hopkins, is otherwise. Hopkins maintains that the senate’s adjournment sine die was effective. His primary argument is that the adjournments clause relied on by the speaker applies only to regular sessions, not to special sessions. As an additional (or possibly alternative) ground, he contends that “the lack of continuous activity or remaining business before the General Assembly argues against the body continuing to remain in session.”
Based on the legal position that the General Assembly was no longer in session, the governor gave Roush a second recess appointment after her first one expired.
Key to assessing these competing claims is understanding the history of the relevant provisions of the Virginia constitution and their relationship to the corresponding provisions in the U.S. Constitution. I do not purport to be an expert on the Virginia constitution, but I am well acquainted with the law and practice of recess appointments at the federal level (click on the “Recess Appointments” category to the right if you don’t believe me).
This background plus the research set forth below convinces me that the Virginia adjournments clause applies to special sessions and thus the senate’s adjournment on August 17 was ineffective. The argument that the General Assembly is no longer in session because it has ceased to conduct any business is somewhat stronger, but, for the reasons set forth below, the better view is that the General Assembly remains in session. Accordingly, Governor McAuliffe’s second recess appointment of Judge Roush appears to be invalid.
There is a reasonable possibility that the Republican-controlled Senate will refuse to confirm any of President Obama’s nominees (or any such nominees who fall into particular categories) in the next Congress. By refusing to confirm nominees, the Republicans would be remedying (it might be argued) the illegal use of the “nuclear option” last year, which allowed Senate Democrats to confirm numerous nominees who otherwise would have been blocked by Senate rules. Senator Ted Cruz has also proposed that the Senate refuse to confirm any Obama nominees, except those in “vital national security positions,” as a response to the executive order on immigration announced this week.
Were this to occur, the issue of recess appointments may again rear its ugly head. To my knowledge, there are currently no recess appointees serving in the administration. It is possible that the President could make recess appointments during the lame duck period, but I assume that House Republicans will foreclose this by refusing to adopt any adjournment resolution that might open the door to such appointments. Instead, each house will (I am guessing) formally adjourn for no more than three days at a time, holding pro forma sessions when necessary for the remainder of the 113th Congress.
One might assume that this pattern would continue for the 114th Congress. However, if the Senate is embargoing most or all Obama nominees, the congressional leadership may see an advantage in allowing the administration to use recess appointments as a safety valve to fill critical or emergency vacancies. If that were the case, the House and Senate would “recess” (which now should be taken as a technical term meaning a concurrent adjournment of both houses for more than three days) from time to time, allowing Obama to make recess appointments during this period.
Any recess appointments made subsequent to the commencement of the first session of the 114th Congress (scheduled for January 6, 2015) would last until the end of the next Senate “session,” which, according to the conventional wisdom endorsed by the Supreme Court in Noel Canning, would normally mean that recess appointees would serve until the end of the Obama administration.
But is this necessarily the case? Professor Seth Barrett Tillman, in a colloquy several years ago with Professor Kalt, argues that the Senate may terminate a recess appointment simply by adopting a resolution declaring its session to be at an end and then promptly re-convening in a new session. Kalt disagrees, contending that both the House and Senate must act together in order to end a session and contending that even this would be a “constitutional impropriety” because it would involve the House in matters relating to appointments and confirmations.
I think Kalt is clearly right that once Congress convenes, both the House and Senate must agree before the session can be ended. It should also be noted that the administration may argue (incorrectly, in my view) that convening a new session of Congress prior to the constitutional default date requires enactment of a law.
Unlike Kalt, though, I see no constitutional impropriety in the House and Senate deciding to formally recess, say, twice a year, once in the summer and once for the Christmas holiday, as clearly intended by the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. During these recesses, the President could make recess appointments that would last until the next recess (i.e., the end of the next session). Adopting such “Tillman adjournments” would give the President the ability to fill critical vacancies while limiting the duration of recess appointments to prevent abuse. It would also re-establish the “recess” as the period between “sessions,” as clearly intended by the framers.
The President could make successive recess appointments to keep a particular vacancy filled. But he could not re-appoint the same individual to fill the vacancy, at least not if that person wanted to be paid.
For a 9-0 decision invalidating the President’s exercise of the recess appointment power, the Supreme Court’s opinion today in Noel Canning revealed a bitter divide among the justices. Justice Breyer, writing for the majority, basically went “full Daugherty,” finding that the Recess Appointment Clause applies to both “inter-session” and “intra-session” breaks, but finding that those breaks must exceed a minimum length to qualify as recesses in which the President may exercise his temporary appointment power. The key quote from Breyer’s decision:
If a Senate recess is so short that it does not require the consent of the House, it is too short to trigger the Recess Appointments Clause. See Art. I, §5, cl. 4. And a recess lasting less than 10 days is presumptively too short as well.
In his concurrence (joined by the Chief Justice and Justices Thomas and Alito), Justice Scalia accuses the majority of adopting an “adverse possession” theory of executive power. In other words, because the executive has long asserted the power to fill vacancies that do not arise during a recess and has maintained that they may be filled during intra-session as well as inter-session breaks and because the Congress has failed to resist these theories on a consistent and effective basis, the executive branch’s theory will prevail. The concurrence would read the RAC to be limited to vacancies that arise during the recess and would hold that only a break between formal sessions constitutes “the recess.”
There will be undoubtedly many other takeaways from a thorough reading of the opinion. But note that this opinion has an important near term effect on the Congress. It appears at first blush that the House can prevent the President from making any more recess appointments simply by refusing to consent to any adjournments of more than three days for the remainder of the Congress. But one can imagine that the executive branch and the Senate Democratic leadership might look for wriggle room, particularly if the Republicans win control of the Senate in November’s election. In particular, the Senate could try to amend its rules so as to deprive itself of the capacity for doing business during pro forma sessions. We will see whether they get that desperate.
Writing in Slate last week, Professor Neal Devins, a noted expert on the Constitution and Congress, had several complaints about how Congress presents its legal positions in court. Devins is unhappy that the House, because it operates on a majoritarian basis, may present legal views that are held only by the majority, but he is equally unhappy that the Senate, because it requires bipartisan consensus, may present no legal views at all. And he is particularly unhappy that in the Noel Canning recess appointments case the Supreme Court heard “only from the Senate minority and not from the Senate itself.” As Devins asks plaintively, “why would the Senate’s own lawyer sit on his hands while the minority leader purports to speak for the Senate?”
Why indeed. Let’s begin by reviewing how “the Senate’s own lawyer,” aka the Senate Legal Counsel, operates. As Devins notes, Senate Legal Counsel must, by statute, receive specific authorization before filing any brief on behalf of the Senate. Devins says that “counsel representation of the Senate requires two-thirds support of a leadership group made up of four members of the majority party and three members of the minority party,” but this is incorrect. Appearance as amicus curiae is authorized by Senate resolution, not by the Joint Leadership Group. See 2 U.S.C. § 288b(c). Nothing in the statute requires that such a resolution be bipartisan.
Continue reading “What Senate Legal Counsel’s Silence Says About Noel Canning: Not Much”
Professor Tillman sends the following thoughts:
I expect one or more, if not all of the Supreme Court’s four liberal members to affirm the DC Circuit’s decision in Noel Canning. The primary issue in Noel Canning is not whether or not the Senate was in recess – but who or what institution gets to decide whether or not the Senate was in recess. Does the Senate make that call or do the President and the courts? In other words, once the Senate has flagged in the traditional way in its traditional records whether or not it is in session or in recess, does anyone (including the President) get to look beyond or behind the record created by the Senate. The President’s position is that the President and the courts are in a better position to make the call than the Senate.
The Origination Clause challenge to the PPACA, which is now making its way through the lower courts, poses a very similar (if not precisely the same) issue. The enrolled bill enacting the PPACA expressly records that the bill originated in the House, not the Senate. The plaintiffs in the Origination Clause case take the position that the courts should ignore the joint determination of the House and Senate in regard to house of origin, in spite of the fact that the relevant constitutional actors have made a final determination using their traditional records in the traditional way. Here too, plaintiffs say the courts could and should look behind the official House-Senate-created-and-verified record.
When is the Senate in recess?
When the Senate’s records state that the Senate was in recess.
When has a bill originated in the House?
When the enrolled bill enacting the statute records that the bill originated in the House.
After all, with the demise of the filibuster, the scope of the President’s recess appointment power matters much less. So if the Supreme Court wants to reverse Noel Canning, then “Go ahead, make my day.”
Well, sketches, I guess we call them. But compare the looks on Justice Alito’s face during the Solicitor General’s argument and Noel Francisco’s.
This Thursday, October 10, at noon, the Heritage Foundation will be hosting an event on recess appointments and the case currently pending in the Supreme Court. Senator Mike Lee will deliver opening remarks, followed by a panel discussion by Professor John Yoo and me. Here is the synopsis of the event:
Recess is over, but the President has been playing around with the Recess Appointments Clause. Earlier this year, President Obama’s alleged recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau came under fire. The problem? The Senate was not in recess at the time of the appointments. Three federal appellate courts have struck down various recess appointments as unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court has agreed to hear National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning this term.
In light of these controversial appointments, we are left with many questions. What is the role of the Senate when it comes to recess appointments? How did our Founding Fathers intend for the recess appointment power to be used? Can the Senate block the President from making recess appointments through the use of pro forma sessions? How might the justices rule in the Noel Canning case? Please join us as our panel of experts explores these issues.
The link for registering for this free event is here.
The Supreme Court granted cert today in the Noel Canning case, as pretty much everyone expected. Cert was granted as to the two questions raised by the government, (1) whether the President can make recess appointments during so-called “intra-session recesses” and (2) whether the vacancy must arise during the recess for the President to exercise power under the Recess Appointments Clause. In addition, the Court directed the parties to address a third question raised by Noel Canning: “Whether the President’s recess-appointment power may be exercised when the Senate is convening every three days in pro forma sessions.”
As mentioned in my prior post, in the course of analyzing the meaning of “recess” in the Recess Appointments Clause, the Third Circuit considered legislative practice at the time of the framing. In looking at the state legislatures prior to 1787, the court found what it viewed as conflicting evidence on whether recesses are limited to intersession breaks.
Some state constitutions, the court noted, clearly indicated that a “recess” and a “session” cannot occur conterminously, thus supporting the intersession recess theory. For example, the Massachusetts and New Hampshire constitutions contain provisions that “make sense only if the legislature is not in ‘session’ when it is ‘in recess.'” Opinion at 48. (This is a point I previously made with respect to the Massachusetts constitution).
On the other hand, the court pointed to instances where the executive branch of a state had (allegedly) interpreted the “recess” to include intra-session breaks. For example, the Vermont constitution granted the executive power to lay embargoes during “the recess of the legislature only.” The Vermont General Assembly, which was meeting in Windsor, adjourned on April 16, 1781, stating that it would next meet on the second Wednesday of June at Bennington. During this adjournment, in May 1781, the Governor of Vermont imposed an embargo.
Continue reading “The Third Circuit and the “Session” of the 18th Century Vermont General Assembly”