Myers v US

Holding

The President has the exclusive authority to remove executive branch officials.

Conclusion

Yes. After tracing legislative debate of the First Congress in 1789 which dealt with the interpretation of the President's appointment power, Chief Justice Taft concluded that the power to remove appointed officers is vested in the President alone. According to Taft, to deny the President that power would not allow him to "discharge his own constitutional duty of seeing that the laws be faithfully executed."

Judgment

upheld fed power

Justice Reynolds Dissent

used an equally exhaustive analysis of quotes from members of the Constitutional Convention, writing that he found no language in the Constitution or in the notes from the Convention intended to grant the President the "illimitable power" to fire every appointed official, "as caprice may suggest", in the entire government with the exception of judges.

Facts

An 1876 law provided that postmasters of the first, second, and third classes shall be appointed and may be removed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. President Woodrow Wilson removed Myers, a postmaster first class, without seeking Senate approval. Myers claimed to have been unlawfully fired and he sued for his unpaid salary from the time he had been removed from office. He took no other employment and the senate didnt confirm another appointee. He died and then his widow kept up the suit. Court of claims rejected the suit and was then appealed to the supreme court. There was detailed discussion over the controversy of the tenure of office act.

Arguments for Myers

Article 2 section 2 gives congress discretion to vest the appointment of inferior officers in the president, court, or heads of departments, and should be inferred to allow congressional participation in the removal of those same officers. The 1876 law is neither isolated nor eccentric; many congressional acts operate under the similar assumption that congress has the power to prescribe the terms of removal from the office of presidential appointees. the argument that the president cannot effectively execute the laws without the unrestricted power of removal begs the question. Congress makes the laws that the president must execute. the constitution makes no vague grant of an executive prerogative to disregard legislative enactments.

Sagers notes

Case on pg 229

Issues

Did the Act unconstitutionally restrict the President's power to remove appointed officials?

Arguments for US

The prez has full and complete power of removal under article 2, which vests the executive power in the president. becaue the power to remove an officer of the executive branch is an executive duty, the president has full power of removal. if congress has the power to prohibit the president from removing any executive official without its consent, the presidential office becomes dependent upon congress, thereby impairing the system of checks and balances. If congress can prohibit the president from removing a postmaster without its consent, then what is to stop congress from prohibitng the president from removing a member of his own cabinet without its consent. suppose one political party dominated congress and congress made all incumbent cabinet members irremovable except with the consent of the senate. if a president of a diff party were elected, his power to do his job would be impaired if not destroyed.

Opinion Chief Justice taft

writing for the Court, noted that the Constitution does mention the appointment of officials, but is silent on their dismissal. An examination of the notes of the Constitutional Convention, however, showed that this silence was intentional: the Convention did discuss the dismissal of executive-branch staff, and believed it was implicit in the Constitution that the President did hold the exclusive power to remove his staff, whose existence was an extension of the President's own authority. The Court therefore found that the statute was unconstitutional, for it violated the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches. In reaching this decision, it also expressly found the Tenure of Office Act, which had imposed a similar requirement on other Presidential appointees and played a key role in the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, to have been invalid; it had been repealed by Congress some years before this decision.

Justice Brandeis Dissent

wrote that the fundamental case deciding the power of the Supreme Court, Marbury v. Madison, "assumed, as the basis of decision, that the President, acting alone, is powerless to remove an inferior civil officer appointed for a fixed term with the consent of the Senate; and that case was long regarded as so deciding."