Removal and Tenure in Office

Abstract:     
Conventional wisdom supposes that the President enjoys a power to remove all presidentially appointed officers, save for judges. A corollary of this belief is that neither Congress nor the judiciary may remove such officers, for when the Constitution grants the President a power, it often follows that no one else can enjoy that power. This Article argues that these orthodoxies are false. First, contrary to the Supreme Court’s hasty conclusion in Bowsher v. Synar, Congress can pass statutes that remove officers. Congress can terminate offices, thereby removing incumbent officers; it can set tenure limits for officers, thus mandating their eventual removal; and it can make removal a consequence of a criminal conviction. Most importantly, Congress can pass statutes that directly and immediately remove officers. Second, the conventional wisdom overstates presidential removal authority in some respects while perhaps understating it in others. On one hand, the accepted view overstates presidential power because it supposes that the President may re-move all presidentially appointed officers. If the Constitution grants the President a distinct removal power, that power only encompasses executive officers. Any removal power would not extend to the quasi-legislative, quasi-judicial officers that populate the independent agencies. On the other hand, the orthodoxy arguably understates presidential power because it supposes that all executive officers must have tenure merely at the President’s pleasure. It may well be that the President may grant executive officers a more secure tenure, such as tenure during good behavior. Third, federal courts may re-move all inferior judicial officers, however they were appointed. Each inferior judicial officer receives an implicit grant of authority from the court she serves. When a court retracts all of its authority from an inferior judicial officer, the court has removed the officer.
In this way, each branch may remove officers, albeit in different ways and to different degrees

Number of Pages in PDF File: 74

Keywords: Removal, Remove, Tenure, Tenure in Office, President, Executive Power, Office, Officer, Judicial Power, Necessary and Proper Clause, Madison, Hamilton, Decision of 1789, Tenure During Good Behavior, Commissions, Tenure During Pleasure

Accepted Paper Series