Myers Case

The Myers Case

However much the two arguments are still subject to dispute, Chief Justice Taft, himself a former President, appears in Myers v. United States 1 to have carried a majority of the Court with him in establishing the Hamiltonian conception as official doctrine. That case confirmed one reading of the “Decision of 1789” in holding the removal power to be constitutionally vested in the President.2 But its importance here lies in its interpretation of the first section of Article II. That language was read, with extensive quotation from Hamilton and from Madison on the removal power, as vesting all executive power in the President, the subsequent language was read as merely particularizing some of this power, and consequently the powers vested in Congress were read as exceptions which must be strictly construed in favor of powers retained by the President.3 Myers remains the fountainhead of the latitudinarian constructionists of presidential power, but its dicta, with regard to the removal power, were first circumscribed in Humphrey's Executor v. United States,4 and then considerably altered in Morrison v. Olson; 5 with regard to the President's “inherent” powers, the Myers dicta were called into considerable question by Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer.6

Resources

References

This text about Myers Case is based on “The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation”, published by the U.S. Government Printing Office.

Notes

[Footnote 1] 272 U.S. 52 (1926). See Corwin, The President's Removal Power Under the Constitution, in 4 SELECTED ESSAYS ON CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 1467 (1938).

[Footnote 2] C. THACH, THE CREATION OF THE PRESIDENCY, 1775-1789, ch. 6 (1923).

[Footnote 3] Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52, 163-164 (1926). Professor Taft had held different views. “The true view of the executive functions is, as I conceive it, that the president can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power or justly implied and included within such express grant as proper and necessary in its exercise. Such specific grant must be either in the federal constitution or in an act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof. There is no undefined residuum of power which he can exercise because it seems to him to be in the public interest. . . .” W. TAFT, OUR CHIEF MAGISTRATE AND HIS POWERS 139- 140 (1916).

[Footnote 4] 295 U.S. 602 (1935).

[Footnote 5] 487 U.S. 654, 685-93 (1988).

[Footnote 6] 343 U.S. 579 (1952).

[Footnote 7] 299 U.S. 304 (1936).

The Myers Case (Removal Power, Executive Establishment and Treaties)

Save for the provision which it makes for a power of impeachment of “civil officers of the United States,” the Constitution contains no reference to a power to remove from office, and until its decision in Myers v. United States,7 on October 25, 1926, the Supreme Court had contrived to sidestep every occasion for a decisive pronouncement regarding the removal power, its extent, and location. The point immediately at issue in the Myers case was the effectiveness of an order of the Postmaster General, acting by direction of the President, to remove from office a firstclass postmaster, in the face of the following provision of an act of Congress passed in 1876: “Postmasters of the first, second, and third classes shall be appointed and may be removed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, and shall hold their offices for four years unless sooner removed or suspended according to law.” 8

More about Myers Case

A divided Court, speaking through Chief Justice Taft, held the order of removal valid and the statutory provision just quoted void. The Chief Justice's relied mainly on the so-called “decision of 1789,” which referred to Congress's that year inserting in the act establishing the Department of State a proviso that was meant to imply recognition that the Secretary would be removable by the President at will. The proviso was especially urged by Madison, who invoked in support of it the opening words of Article II and the President's duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

Myers Case: Developments

Succeeding passages of the Chief Justice's opinion erected on this basis a highly selective account of doctrine and practice regarding the removal power down to the Civil War, which was held to yield the following results: “Article II grants to the President the executive power of the Government, i.e., the general administrative control of those executing the laws, including the power of appointment and removal of executive officers-a conclusion confirmed by his obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed; that Article II excludes the exercise of legislative power by Congress to provide for appointments and removals, except only as granted therein to Congress in the matter of inferior offices; that Congress is only given power to provide for appointments and removals of inferior officers after it has vested, and on condition that it does vest, their appointment in other authority than the President with the Senate's consent; that the provisions of the second section of Article II, which blend action by the legislative branch, or by part of it, in the work of the executive, are limitations to be strictly construed and not to be extended by implication; that the President's power of removal is further established as an incident to his specifically enumerated function of appointment by and with the advice of the Senate, but that such incident does not by implication extend to removals the Senate's power of checking appointments; and finally that to hold otherwise would make it impossible for the President, in case of political or other differences with the Senate or Congress, to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” 9

Other Aspects

The holding in Myers boils down to the proposition that the Constitution endows the President with an illimitable power to remove all officers in whose appointment he has participated, with the exception of federal judges. The motivation of the holding was not, it may be assumed, any ambition on the Chief Justice's part to set history aright-or awry.10 Rather, it was the concern that he voiced in the following passage in his opinion: “There is nothing in the Constitution which permits a distinction between the removal of the head of a department or a bureau, when he discharges a political duty of the President or exercises his discretion, and the removal of executive officers engaged in the discharge of their other normal duties. The imperative reasons requiring an unrestricted power to remove the most important of his subordinates in their most important duties must, therefore, control the interpretation of the Constitution as to all appointed by him.” 11

Other Issues

Thus spoke the former President Taft, and the result of his prepossession was a rule that, as was immediately pointed out, exposed the so-called “independent agencies”-the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the like-to presidential domination. Unfortunately, the Chief Justice, while professing to follow Madison's leadership, had omitted to weigh properly the very important observation that the latter had made at the time regarding the office of Comptroller of the Treasury. “The Committee,” said Madison, “has gone through the bill without making any provision respecting the tenure by which the comptroller is to hold his office. I think it is a point worthy of consideration, and shall, therefore, submit a few observations upon it. It will be necessary to consider the nature of this office, to enable us to come to a right decision on the subject; in analyzing its properties, we shall easily discover they are of a judiciary quality as well as the executive; perhaps the latter obtains in the greatest degree. The principal duty seems to be deciding upon the lawfulness and justice of the claims and accounts subsisting between the United States and particular citizens: this partakes strongly of the judicial character, and there may be strong reasons why an officer of this kind should not hold his office at the pleasure of the executive branch of the government.” 12 In Humphrey's Executor v. United States,13 the Court seized upon “the nature of the office” concept and applied it as a corrective to the overbroad Myers holding.

Resources

References

This text about Myers Case is based on “The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation”, published by the U.S. Government Printing Office.

Notes

[Footnote 7] 272 U.S. 52 (1926).

[Footnote 8] 19 Stat. 78, 80.

[Footnote 9] 272 U.S. at 163-64.

[Footnote 10] The reticence of the Constitution respecting removal left room for four possibilities: first, the one suggested by the common law doctrine of “estate in office,” from which the conclusion followed that the impeachment power was the only power of removal intended by the Constitution; second, that the power of removal was an incident of the power of appointment and hence belonged, at any rate in the absence of legal or other provision to the contrary, to the appointing authority; third, that Congress could, by virtue of its power “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper,” etc., determine the location of the removal power; fourth, that the President by virtue of his “executive power” and his duty “to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” possesses the power of removal over all officers of the United States except judges. In the course of the debate on the act to establish a Department of Foreign Affairs (later changed to Department of State) all of these views were put forward, with the final result that a clause was incorporated in the measure that implied, as pointed out above, that the head of the department would be removable by the President at his discretion. Contemporaneously, and indeed until after the Civil War, this action by Congress, in other words “the decision of 1789,” was interpreted as establishing “a practical construction of the Constitution” with respect to executive officers appointed without stated terms. However, in the dominant opinion of those best authorized to speak on the subject, the “correct interpretation” of the Constitution was that the power of removal was always an incident of the power of appointment, and that therefore in the case of officers appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate the removal power was exercisable by the President only with the advice and consent of the Senate. For an extensive review of the issue at the time of Myers, see Corwin, The President's Removal Power Under the Constitution, in 4 SELECTED ESSAYS ON CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 1467 (1938).

[Footnote 11] 272 U.S. at 134. Note the parallelism of the arguments from separation-ofpowers and the President's ability to enforce the laws in the decision rendered on Congress's effort to obtain a role in the actual appointment of executive officers in Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 109-43 (1976), and in many of the subsequent separationof- powers decisions.

[Footnote 12] ANNALS OF CONGRESS 611-612 (1789).

[Footnote 13] 295 U.S. 602 (1935). The case is also styled Rathbun, Executor v. United States, Humphrey having, like Myers before him, died in the course of his suit for salary. Proponents of strong presidential powers long argued that Humphrey's Executor, like A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935), both cases argued and decided contemporaneously, reflected the anti-New Deal views of a conservative Court and wrongfully departed from Myers. See Scalia, Historical Anomalies in Administrative Law, 1985 YEARBOOK OF THE SUPREME COURT HISTORICAL SOCIETY 103, 106-10. Now-Justice Scalia continues to adhere to his views and to Myers. Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654, 697, 707-11, 723-27 (1988) (dissenting).