For the past week there has been a fair amount of speculation that, because no opinion had yet been posted on its webpage, the Office of Legal Counsel either was not consulted about President Obama’s recess appointment on January 4 of Richard Cordray and three NLRB members, or that it had been consulted and said […]
Archive | Recess Appointments
Ackerman: Release the Recess Appointment Opinion
By Jonathan H. Adler on January 10, 2012 11:29 pm in Executive Branch, OLC Opinions, Recess Appointments
Yale’s Bruce Ackerman, writing in the WSJ, calls for the White House to release the legal memorandum upon which President Obama based his decision to make several recess appointments while the Senate claimed not to be in recess. As Ackerman notes, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel “traditionally served as the executive branch’s authoritative […]
McConnell on Recess Appointments and “Executive Overreach”
Today’s WSJ features an op-ed by former federal judge Michael McConnell on President Obama’s decision to grant recess appointments to Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Board and three members of the National Labor Relations Board. It is hard to imagine a plausible constitutional basis for the appointments. The president has power to […]
Preemptive Recess Appointments
One justification for President Obama’s decision to make several recess appointments this week is that the appointments were necessary to prevent partisan obstruction from disabling federal agencies from performing their duties. In the case of Richard Cordray, it was clear that Senate Republicans would block his appointment as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Board […]
Recess Appointment Round-Up
The recess appointnment claus is an “odd clause” — and perhaps even the “oddest clause of all” in the Constitution, according to BU’s Jay Wexler. However odd it may be, it’s receiving lots of attention due to the President’s decision to make four recess appointments even though the Senate maintains it had not formally recessed. Michael […]
More Recess Appointments
The Consumer Financial Protection Board was not the only beneficiary of a recess appointment today. The AP reports the President also made three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board — two Democrats and one Republican. The White House release is here.
A Recess Appointment for Cordray
The AP is reporting that President Obama will give former Ohio Treasurer Richard Cordray a recess appointment today to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Board. Cordray was nominated to the post some months ago but Senate Republicans have blocked his confirmation due to their opposition to the CFPB’s structure, in particular the lack of […]
Recess Appointment of Richard Cordray Despite Pro Forma Sessions
It is being reported that President Obama intends to recess appoint Richard Cordray to be the first Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau despite the fact that the Senate has been conducting pro forma sessions for the precise purpose of preventing him from making recess appointments. Under this procedure, the Senate “gavels in” briefly […]
President to Recess Appoint James Cole as Deputy AG
The President today announced that he would recess appoint James M. Cole as Deputy Attorney General. His nomination has been pending since May–reportedly the longest delay in confirming a DAG nominee in 30 years, but in the context of nominations in the last decade or so (some of which have dragged on for years), an […]
Recess Appointments to Art. III Courts, 1789-2004
When I was in the Office of the Solicitor General, I was the Assistant who worked on the (many) briefs in opposition to cert petitions challenging the recess appointments of Judges William Pryor and Charles Pickering in 2004. In connection with those opps, Bristow Fellow Ileana Ciobanu and I compiled this list using DOJ and […]