Who are 'Officers of the United States'?

Abstract

For decades courts have believed that only officials with “significant authority” are “Officers of the United States” subject to the Constitution’s Article II Appointments Clause requirements. But this standard has proved difficult to apply to major categories of officials. This Article examines whether “significant authority” is even the proper standard, at least as that standard has been applied in modern practice. To uncover whether the modern understanding of the term “officer” is consistent with the term’s original public meaning, this Article uses two distinctive tools: (i) corpus linguistics-style analysis of Founding-era documents and (ii) examination of appointment practices during the First Congress following constitutional ratification. Both suggest that the original public meaning of “officer” is much broader than modern doctrine assumes— encompassing any government official with responsibility for an ongoing governmental duty. This historic meaning of “officer” would likely extend to thousands of officials not currently appointed as Article II officers, such as tax collectors, disaster relief officials, customs officials, and administrative judges. This conclusion might at first seem destructive to the civil service structure because it would involve redesignating these officials as Article II officers—not employees outside the scope of Article II’s requirements. But this Article suggests that core components of the current federal hiring system might fairly readily be brought into compliance with Article II by amending who exercises final approval to rank and hire candidates. These feasible but significant changes would restore * Assistant Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. Earlier drafts of this article were written as an Olin-Searle Fellow in Law affiliated with Georgetown University Law Center and the George Washington University Law School. This article benefited from feedback received during presentations at Northwestern’s Public Law Colloquium; the Administrative Law New Scholarship Roundtable hosted by the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law; the Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism at the University of San Diego School of Law; the George Washington University Law School’s faculty lunch workshop series; the Federalist Society’s Junior Scholars Colloquium; and the Georgetown Law Fellows Collaborative. Particular thanks for helpful comments and conversations are due to Aditya Bamzai, Randy Barnett, Will Baude, Bill Buzbee, Jud Campbell, Shon Hopwood, Greg Maggs, Dina Mishra, Jonathan Mitchell, Stephen Mouritsen, Eloise Pasachoff, James Phillips, Richard Re, Matt Shapiro, Ryan Scoville, Jonathan Siegel, Larry Solum, Seth Barrett Tillman, and Robin West. I am also grateful for excellent research assistance from Daniel Shapiro. Who Are “Officers of the United States”? 70 STAN. L. REV. 443 (2018) 444 a critical mechanism for democratic accountability and transparency inherent in the Appointments Clause. Who Are “Officers of the United States”? 70 STAN. L. REV. 443 (2018) 445 Table of