• Login
    View Item 
    •   Home
    • Yale Law School Faculty Scholarship
    • Faculty Scholarship Series
    • View Item
    •   Home
    • Yale Law School Faculty Scholarship
    • Faculty Scholarship Series
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of openYLSCommunitiesPublication DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionPublication DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Statistics

    Display statistics

    The Construction of Original Public Meaning

    • CSV
    • RefMan
    • EndNote
    • BibTex
    • RefWorks
    Thumbnail
    Name:
    31_Constitutional_Commentary_7 ...
    Size:
    1.522Mb
    Format:
    PDF
    Download
    Author
    Balkin, Jack
    
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13051/4689
    Abstract
    In January of 2014, lawyers assembled at the Supreme Court to argue NLRB v. Noel Canning. One of the questions before the Justices was whether the President could only make recess appointments between official sessions of the Senate (intersession recesses), or could also make appointments within an official session when the Senate had adjourned for some substantial period of time (intra-session recesses). As the case moved through the courts, lawyers debated the original meaning of Article II, Section 2, Clause 3, which gives the President power "to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate." Did "the Recess" refer to the single recess between official sessions, or did it refer to any extended period of time in which the Senate was not sitting? Because transportation between home states and Washington D.C. was quite difficult for many Senators in the early Republic, the Senate did not take any significant intra-session recesses-other than for the period between Christmas and the beginning of Januaryuntil after the Civil War. Therefore the meaning of its early practice was ambiguous. "[T]he Recess" could refer to a single event that occurred only between official sessions, as Justice Scalia insisted, or it could refer to an instance of a larger class of similar things or events, as in the sentence "the elephant is the largest land mammal." Suppose, however, that just before the oral argument, it had been discovered that multiple versions of the Constitution had been distributed in September 1787 in states whose assent was crucial to its eventual adoption-for example, Pennsylvania. Some of these texts said, "during the Recess of the Senate." Other texts said "while the Senate is not sitting." Amazingly, however, no one noticed the discrepancy during the ratification debates, and the Constitution was eventually adopted.
    Collections
    Faculty Scholarship Series

    entitlement

     
    DSpace software (copyright © 2002 - 2025)  DuraSpace
    Quick Guide | Contact Us
    Open Repository is a service operated by 
    Atmire NV
     

    Export search results

    The export option will allow you to export the current search results of the entered query to a file. Different formats are available for download. To export the items, click on the button corresponding with the preferred download format.

    By default, clicking on the export buttons will result in a download of the allowed maximum amount of items.

    To select a subset of the search results, click "Selective Export" button and make a selection of the items you want to export. The amount of items that can be exported at once is similarly restricted as the full export.

    After making a selection, click one of the export format buttons. The amount of items that will be exported is indicated in the bubble next to export format.