recess appointment

recess appointment, a temporary appointment by the president of the United States, made during a recess of the U.S. Senate, to a vacant office whose nominees are subject to Senate approval under Article II, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution. That section states in part 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.” The same section enables the president to obviate the need for Senate approval by “fill[ing] up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.” Although the original purpose of the appointments clause was to facilitate administrative continuity in the executive branch during a Senate recess (until the end of the 19th century, such recesses usually lasted more than six months), several presidents have used the clause to temporarily install controversial appointees whose nominations might not have been confirmed by the Senate.

The sessions of both the Senate and the House of Representatives are generally concurrent, beginning (under the Twentieth Amendment) on the third day of January and extending (in recent decades) to November or December of the same year. The yearly sessions of both houses of Congress are usually adjourned at the same time by means of a concurrent resolution. Both houses also typically enter concurrent and relatively brief recess periods during their shared session in keeping with the Constitution’s Article I, Section 5, which ensures that “neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days.” The period between consecutive sessions of the Senate and House is commonly called an “intersession recess,” and a break in proceedings taken during a single session is called an “intrasession recess.” Appointments made during an intracession recess usually last longer than those from an intercession recess because the former extend through the remainder of the term in which they are made and include the entire next term.

The Constitution does not impose any requirements regarding the minimum length of the Senate recess during which appointments may be made. From the second half of the 20th century, when intracession appointments became more common, legal disputes arose regarding their legitimacy, in part because they were often used for political reasons. Eventually, the Senate adopted the practice of conducting pro forma sessions in coordination with the House—that is, brief sessions in which no official business is usually conducted—every three days during an effective or agreed-upon recess in order to block appointments by the sitting president.

In June of 2014, during Pres. Barack Obama’s second term, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning Company) that recess appointments can be made in intracession as well as intersession recesses; that the vacancies filled during a Senate recess need not literally have happened during a recess—as stated in the Constitution—but could be preexisting; that a pro forma session cannot be regarded as an illegitimate interruption of a Senate recess (“the Senate is in session when it says it is”); and that no appointment can be made during a Senate recess of less than 10 days. The Court’s decision enabled the House of Representatives, as well as the Senate, to block recess appointments by refusing to agree to a Senate recess of 10 or more days.

Soon after winning the presidential election of 2024, but before his inauguration to a nonconsecutive second term, President-elect Donald Trump began to publicly announce his nominees for cabinet offices and other executive positions, including secretary of state, secretary of defense, attorney general, secretary of health and human services, and director of the FBI. Many of Trump’s proposed cabinet members and other officers requiring Senate confirmation were strongly opposed by Democrats and even some Republicans, who regarded them as unqualified, extremist, or obviously opposed to the mission of the department or agency they would head. Perhaps in anticipation of such a reaction, Trump called upon Republicans—who had won a majority in the Senate and had preserved their control of the House—to initiate a Senate recess so that he could quickly fill the executive branch with his preferred candidates.