But doesn’t the recess have to be at least 3 days long?
I don’t think three days traditionally had any special meaning–a Justice Department report in the 1990s suggested that was a guideline for how long the Senate needed to be in recess, but no court addressed it at the time.
When Teddy put through almost two hundred recess appointments in that “moment” between the gaveling out of the old Congress and the gaveling in of the new, it was remarked in the time that it was “not a recess in the understood sense” and a lot of Senators were mighty pissed about it, but it was never really resolved in his time as to whether it was legally kosher.
However I misspoke before–today I don’t believe Teddy’s actions would work because of the 9-0 SCOTUS decision I mentioned, when I was thinking of that decision I thought it only applied to an intra-session recess (Obama appointed people to the NLRB and Richard Cowdray to head the CFPB because he basically said an intra-session recess existed since the Senate was just running on a skeleton crew and gaveling in/out briefly each day) but after reviewing the case (NLRB v Noel Canning) I was mistaken, and the SCOTUS was broad in its ruling–covering both inter-session and intra-session recesses (the latter is what Teddy squeezed his appointments into, a true break between congress’s as one set left office and the other assumed office), and more broadly basically put the determination of when either house of Congress (but specifically the Senate) is in recess to be 100% the discretion of the legislative branch.
Then the court also went on to say that very brief recesses that don’t require the consent of the House, wouldn’t be sufficient in length to justify a presidential recess appointment, either. So a) they established that it’s 100% the discretion of Congress as to when they are in recess and b) even short recesses wouldn’t justify recess appointments, short being defined as “short enough that one house can enter recess without the permission of another.”
(Underline added)
“Mostly meant”??? Beginning with the ratification of the U.S. Constitution and the creation of the United States of America, “states’ rights” were the rights kept by the original thirteen (as well as any additional) states, to pass, enforce, and interpret their own laws, including creating public policy.
Except for the powers that the states originally granted to the federal government, states’ rights meant that a state was entitled to govern itself.
If it were written that way, why would you be so surprised? This is a current law in Idaho for grounds for divorce
First of all notice the archaic spelling. Notice also that under the law a woman cannot be guilty of “wilful neglect” so yes laws can be written in an explicitly sexist or racist way…
IIRC it’s not that it was legal to kidnap a black man bu that since blacks could not testify in court it would be impossible in most cases to ever get a conviction - making it effectively legal to enslave free blacks.
From what was portrayed in 12 Years a Slave, if he had not gone down to DC but had been kidnapped from his home, his white neighbors would have gladly testified against the kidnappers. Let’s not forget that the sectional animus in the years leading up to the Civil War was not only from white Southerners against Northerners. They had a reason to be concerned about the intentions of Northerners, because in New England in particular, there was deep antipathy for slavery.
Districts are based on population. Those large cities get a lot of districts. There are like 10 of them in NYC.
80% of the US population live in urban areas (which includes suburbs).
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/census_issues/archives/metropolitan_planning/cps2k.cfm
Suburbs do not trend Republican. They are trending bluer and bluer.
The biggest skew right now is gerrymandering. If we got rid of gerrymandering, Pelosi would probably be speaker of the house.
Not if you were an escaped slave. Going to a free state meant that you were still a slave even if the state said “no slavery, no way, no how”
So what would happen if Obama did try to make a recess appointment? Would the question of whether he can do that go directly to SCOTUS, or to some lower court first? If directly to SCOTUS, what happens if there is a 4-4 vote?
He can’t make a recess appointment because the Senate never goes into recess anymore. They have a guy come in and bang a gavel every 3 days so they can say they are still in session. The Supreme Court already decided that’s kosher.
But the idea is that they couldn’t do that during the brief period of time between the end of one lot of Senator’s terms and the swearing in of the next bunch. Reading Martin’s cite above more carefully, it appears that precedent is now clear that that’s not considered a “recess”, but I’d still be curious to know exactly who would be in charge of applying that precedent.
Obama would be clearly violating a Supreme Court ruling. He had appointments nullified. What do you mean “who would apply that precedent”? No judge would swear in an appointment if Obama just went ahead and appointed someone in that circumstance.
Right, but those appointments were nullified BY THE SUPREME COURT. No matter how flagrantly an action violates established precedent, you still need a court to rule on it. Obama makes the appointment, the GOP sues to stop it – does it go directly to the SCOTUS or to some lower court? Theoretically, if the lower court had a Democratic majority, it could overturn the precedent and its decision would stand in the event of a 4-4 SCOTUS tie.
Would never happen, but it would be delicious for Scalia’s seat to be filled by use of the same “fuck the law, we’re going to do what’s best for our party” attitude that Scalia used to install President Bush.
What do think would happen? He would just show up at the Supreme Court and just listening in on cases til they dragged him out?
No, I think that the GOP would sue to stop the nominee from taking his seat, and Obama could come up with some argument explaining why this situation isn’t actually covered by the previous ruling (or that the previous ruling was in error). A court would then need to rule on that argument.
Do you think in the mean time he would be provided with a staff and sit on the bench? In 2 hours there would be a court order blocking him from taking the position. Any court they went to would eventually uphold the previous ruling and that would be that.
:smack: Which is why I said:
No she wouldn’t. I wonder why no matter how many times I’ve linked to studies showing this is simply a lie, people keep repeating it. The GOP house margin is far larger than any study has ever shown the gerrymandering advantage is, end of story. I will no longer bother citing stuff on this one–this is a lie and is not remotely true.
The reality of the scenario with Obama just declaring a recess and appointing someone again is likely the Supreme court rules 8-0 it’s not proper and the new justice has no standing to hear cases in the court. Noel Canning was 9-0, so the vast weight of judicial opinion across the spectrum rejects Obama’s previous interpretation and would do so again. It’d be unprecedented because I don’t believe the SCOTUS has ever been so involved in its own membership to that degree, but I suspect they’d hear the case. I’m not sure a lower court wouldn’t just rule that they don’t have proper standing to evaluate the matter since it pertains to membership in the SCOTUS, but I could be wrong.