Myers v. United States

Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926), was a United States Supreme Court decision ruling that the president 's exclusive power to remove executive branch officials is vested in the Office of the Presidency by Article Two of the United States Constitution , and the Take Care Clause generally limits Congress from restricting this power.

Myers was the first Supreme Court case to invalidate a federal law for violating the separation of powers by allowing Congress to "participate in the exercise of [the removal power]". The Taft Court's broad view of the president's "constitutional duty of seeing that the laws be faithfully executed" was soon thereafter limited in _Humphrey's Executor v. United States _ (1935) to "purely executive" offices.

In _Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau _ (2020), the Supreme Court interpreted Humphrey's Executor as recognizing an exception for independent multimember agencies, and reaffirming the core holding of Myers that the president generally has an unencumbered removal power.

Contents

• 1 Background

• 2 Supreme Court

  • 2.1 Majority

  • 2.2 Dissents

• 3 Subsequent developments

• 4 References

• 5 Works cited

• 6 See also

• 7 External links

Background

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After decades of political controversy surrounding the tenure of political appointees, the president's power of removal was recognized as incidental to the Article II appointment power in a series of Supreme Court decisions in the late 19th-century. In _Parsons v. United States _ (1897) the Court said the president's power to remove was implicit when a statute was silent. This left open the question of whether it was constitutional for Congress to require advice and consent for a removal.

An 1876 federal 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." In 1920, Frank S. Myers, a first-class postmaster in Portland, Oregon removed from office by president Woodrow Wilson argued that his dismissal violated this law. He lost in the court of claims on the ground of laches . After Myers's death his widow continued the litigation.

Supreme Court

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According to Justice Pierce Butler 's notes the justices conferenced Myers on April 25, 1925. The justices appear to have agreed that the case should be decided on constitutional grounds. The Court held that the statute was unconstitutional, as it violated the separation of powers between the executive and the legislative branches. All told, it was one of the longest set of opinions in Supreme Court history up to that point.

Majority

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Chief Justice and former president William Howard Taft , writing for the Court, noted that the Constitution mentions the appointment of officials but is silent on their dismissal. He proceeded to conduct a voluminous examination on the history of the president's removal power.

Taft first examined the notes of the Constitutional Convention. He found that the Virginia Plan proposed to vest in the Executive "all the executive powers of the Congress under the Convention". Some of the states remained wary of proposals for a unitary executive , and would not agree to ratification unless the Appointments Clause included an advice and consent requirement.

The Chief Justice gave little weight to the argument advanced by Senator Claude Pepper , appearing as amicus curiae, that recognizing an unrestricted presidential removal power would revive the spoils system. The Court responded that, under existing conditions, "the independent power of removal by the President alone ... works no practical interference with the merit system," because "It is the intervention of the Senate in their (unclassified inferior officers) appointment and not in their removal which prevents their classification into the merit system." : 484 

Taft finally analyzed subsequent congressional debates over the issue.

He credited Montesquieu as the major intellectual influence for the separation of powers principle and concluded that "the reasonable construction of the Constitution must be that the branches should be kept separate in all cases in which they were not expressly blended". Taft cited historical evidence about Alexander Hamilton and the Neutrality Proclamation to argue that the Take Care Clause does not restrict or limit the "Executive Power" vested in the Office of the Presidency by Article II of the United States Constitution .

He found that The Decision of 1789 weighed heavily in favor of an unencumbered removal power that "vested in the President alone".

Taft concluded that Article II "grants to the President" the "general administrative control of those executing the laws, including the power of appointment and removal of executive officers" that is needed to fulfill the Article II responsibility to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed".

Dissents

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In a lengthy dissent, Justice McReynolds used an equally exhaustive analysis of quotes from members of the Constitutional Convention and, 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 government official "as caprice may suggest". McReynolds said an unchecked removal power had "brought the public service to a low estate and caused insistent demand for reform," citing Daniel Webster , Henry Clay , and John C. Calhoun on the "serious evils which followed the practice of dismissing civil officers as caprice or interest dictated." : 486 

In a separate dissent, Justice Brandeis 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

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