Recess appointments could put Trump at odds with conservatives on the Supreme Court
[In 2014, when the justices unanimously ruled that Democratic President Barack Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were illegal, Justice Antonin] Scalia, an icon of the right, applied his originalist approach to the Constitution to conclude that there was little doubt what the framers were trying to do.
The whole point of the constitutional provision on recess appointments, adopted in 1787 in the era of horse and buggy, was that the Senate could not quickly be summoned to fill critical vacancies, he wrote.
Reading a summary of his opinion aloud in the courtroom on June 26, 2014, Scalia said the power to make recess appointments “is an anachronism.”
The Senate always can be convened on short notice to consider a president’s nominations, 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, which is precisely what happened here,” Scalia said. [Continue reading…]