{"id":16653,"date":"2012-12-06T12:12:54","date_gmt":"2012-12-06T17:12:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=16653"},"modified":"2012-12-06T12:12:54","modified_gmt":"2012-12-06T17:12:54","slug":"dc-judge-says-constitution-trumps-precedent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/16653\/dc-judge-says-constitution-trumps-precedent\/","title":{"rendered":"DC Judge Says Constitution Trumps Precedent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2012\/dec\/5\/court-questions-obama-recess-appointments\/ \" target=\"_blank\">Washington Times<\/a> captures a revealing back-and-forth between an Obama Justice Department lawyer and a conservative D.C. Circuit appeals judge over whether the text of the Constitution or court precedent should decide when the President can make recess appointments:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cOnce you remove yourself from the principles set forth in the Constitution \u2014 inter-session versus intra-session \u2014 you are adrift,\u201d said Judge <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/topics\/thomas-b-griffith\/\">Thomas B. Griffith<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>He was joined in his pointed questioning by Chief Judge <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/topics\/david-b-sentelle\/\">David B. Sentelle<\/a>, who said the clause in the Constitution giving presidents recess appointment powers refers to \u201cthe recess,\u201d which he said suggests the one at the end of each year, not the breaks <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/topics\/congress\/\">Congress<\/a> regularly takes for holidays, weekends or other reasons.<\/p>\n<p>If the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/topics\/us-court-of-appeals\/\">court<\/a> were to rule that way, it would upset the balance that has been maintained over decades, and would conflict with another appeals court\u2019s precedent \u2014 though that didn\u2019t bother Judge <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/topics\/david-b-sentelle\/\">Sentelle<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cForget about a century of precedent \u2014 go back to the Constitution,\u201d he told <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/topics\/beth-brinkmann\/\">Beth Brinkmann<\/a>, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/topics\/department-of-justice\/\">Justice Department<\/a> lawyer who argued the case for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/topics\/barack-obama\/\">Obama administration<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>She warned that going that route would change the system of checks and balances fundamentally.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Sentelle sounds like my kind of judge.\u00a0 Let\u2019s hope this is the beginning of a trend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Washington Times captures a revealing back-and-forth between an Obama Justice Department lawyer and a conservative D.C. Circuit appeals judge over whether the text of the Constitution or court precedent should decide when the President can make recess appointments: \u201cOnce you remove yourself from the principles set forth in the Constitution \u2014 inter-session versus intra-session [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[144,1453,1402,1018,3958],"class_list":["post-16653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-constitution","tag-department-of-justice","tag-judiciary","tag-recess-appointment","tag-sentelle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16653"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16657,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16653\/revisions\/16657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}