The Appointments Clause

Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 provides that the President shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States. It adds that Congress may by law vest the appointment of inferior officers in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments. The framers compromised between delegates who wanted the Senate to choose officials and those who wanted the President to act alone, aiming to combine accountability with a check on favoritism.

The Supreme Court has drawn several lines under the clause. In Buckley v. Valeo in 1976 it held that Congress could not appoint members of the Federal Election Commission itself. In Morrison v. Olson in 1988 it treated the independent counsel as an inferior officer who could be appointed by a court, and in Edmond v. United States in 1997 it said inferior officers are those supervised by a principal officer. In Lucia v. SEC in 2018 it held that the agency's administrative law judges are officers who must be properly appointed, and in United States v. Arthrex in 2021 it required that patent judges' decisions be reviewable by a presidentially appointed director.

Most of the roughly 1,300 positions requiring Senate confirmation are filled through this process, while most federal employees are not officers at all. In Kennedy v. Braidwood Management in 2025 the Court upheld a preventive health task force as inferior officers removable by the Health and Human Services secretary. In 2024 a federal judge dismissed the classified documents case against Donald Trump on the ground that the special counsel was not validly appointed, and in 2025 courts ruled that several interim or acting U.S. attorneys were serving unlawfully. Supporters of strict enforcement say the clause preserves accountability, while others warn that rigid rules disrupt government work.