Morrison v. Olson

Last updated

Morrison v. Olson
Seal of the United States Supreme Court.svg
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 26, 1988
Decided June 29, 1988
Full case nameAlexia Morrison, Independent Counsel v. Theodore Olson, et al.
Citations487 U.S. 654 ( more )
108 S. Ct. 2597; 101 L. Ed. 2d 569; 1988 U.S. LEXIS 3034; 56 U.S.L.W. 4835
Case history
PriorIn re Sealed Case, 838 F.2d 476 (D.C. Cir. 1988); probable jurisdiction noted, 484 U.S. 1058(1988).
Holding
The Independent Counsel Act's restriction on the power of the Attorney General to remove an inferior officer only for good cause does not violate the Appointments Clause. The Independent Counsel Act is constitutional, as it does not increase the power of the judiciary or legislative branches at the expense of the executive branch.
Court membership
Chief Justice
William Rehnquist
Associate Justices
William J. Brennan Jr.  · Byron White
Thurgood Marshall  · Harry Blackmun
John P. Stevens  · Sandra Day O'Connor
Antonin Scalia  · Anthony Kennedy
Case opinions
MajorityRehnquist, joined by Brennan, White, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens, O'Connor
DissentScalia
Kennedy took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
U.S. Const. art. II

Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654 (1988), was a Supreme Court of the United States decision that determined the Independent Counsel Act was constitutional. Morrison also set important precedent determining the scope of Congress's ability to encumber the President's authority to remove Officers of the United States from office. In Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2020), the Supreme Court distinguished Morrison as a narrow exception applying only to inferior officers.

Contents

Over the years, the case has become at least as well known for its lone dissent by Justice Antonin Scalia. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

Facts

The case involved subpoenas from two subcommittees of the United States House of Representatives that directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to produce documents relating to the efforts of the EPA and the Land and Natural Resources Division of the Justice Department to enforce the Superfund law. President Ronald Reagan ordered the Administrator of the EPA to withhold the documents on the grounds that they contained "enforcement sensitive information." This led to an investigation by the House Judiciary Committee that later produced a report suggesting that Theodore Olson, the Assistant Attorney General for the Watergate-era Office of Legal Counsel, had given false and misleading testimony before a House subcommittee during the early parts of the investigation.

The Chairman of the Judiciary Committee forwarded a copy of the report to the Attorney General with a request that he seek the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate the allegations against Olson and two others. Alexia Morrison was named independent counsel and given jurisdiction to investigate whether Olson had violated federal law. Olson moved to quash the subpoenas and sued Morrison in her official capacity.

Olson argued that the Office of the Independent Counsel took executive powers away from the office of the President of the United States and created a hybrid "fourth branch" of government that was ultimately answerable to no one. He argued that the broad powers of an independent counsel could be easily abused or corrupted by partisanship. Morrison in turn argued that her position was necessary in order to prevent abuses by the executive branch, which historically operated in a closed environment.

Holding

The Court held that the independent counsel provision of the Ethics in Government Act did not violate the principle of separation of powers because it did not increase the power of one branch at the expense of another. Instead, even though the President (an executive office) cannot fire Independent Counsel, he still counts as an officer of the Executive branch, i.e. that is, he is not under the control of either the U.S. Congress or the courts.

Justice Scalia's dissent

Opinion

Justice Scalia, the lone dissenter, said that the law should be struck down because (1) criminal prosecution is an exercise of "purely executive power" and (2) the law deprived the president of "exclusive control" of that power. [9]

In his opinion, Scalia predicted how the law might be abused in practice, writing, "I fear the Court has permanently encumbered the Republic with an institution that will do it great harm." [10] His discussion of the separation of powers affected by Morrison v. Olson is famous for its rhetorical comparison to other Supreme Court cases on separation of powers:

Frequently an issue of this sort will come before the Court clad, so to speak, in sheep's clothing: the potential of the asserted principle to effect important change in the equilibrium of power is not immediately evident, and must be discerned by a careful and perceptive analysis. But this wolf comes as a wolf.

Scalia's dissent in Morrison is frequently cited as one of his most memorable and rhetorically powerful opinions, and it is considered by many to be at the top of the list. Over time, Scalia's lone dissent has become far more widely accepted as the correct view and likely led to the 1999 Congressional vote to scuttle the independent counsel statute. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

Agreement with the dissent from politicians and commentators

Conservatives like Senator Bob Dole shared similar concerns when Lawrence Walsh announced the re-indictment of former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger on charges related to the Iran–Contra affair four days before the 1992 U.S. presidential election. [11] Critics[ who? ] also sensed partisan politics when Walsh's office leaked a note suggesting President Bush Sr. had lied about his connections to the affair.

Concerns were also raised, in line with Scalia's dissent, when independent counsel Kenneth Starr spent $40 million and more than four years investigating President Clinton's land deals and extramarital affairs. [12] Many[ who? ] believed the investigation was partisan.[ citation needed ]

Aftermath

Congress let the Independent Counsel Act expire in 1999. Then-Judge Samuel Alito said the decision hit the separation of powers doctrine 'about as hard as heavy-weight champ Mike Tyson usually hits his opponents.'" [13] It seemingly "drove a stake into the heart of" Myers v. United States , the controlling case on presidential removal powers at that time. [14] In 2013, Justice Scalia described Morrison v. Olson as the most wrenching case in which he had participated:

Probably the most wrenching was Morrison v. Olson, which involved the independent counsel. To take away the power to prosecute from the president and give it to somebody who's not under his control is a terrible erosion of presidential power. And it was wrenching not only because it came out wrong—I was the sole dissenter—but because the opinion was written by Rehnquist, who had been head of the Office of Legal Counsel, before me, and who I thought would realize the importance of that power of the president to prosecute. And he not only wrote the opinion; he wrote it in a manner that was more extreme than I think Bill Brennan would have written it. That was wrenching." [15]

In April 2006, a court citing Morrison rejected I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's argument that Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald lacked the legal authority to bring charges against him. [16] Morrison was distinguished in Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2020) as being an exception to the President's generally unencumbered authority to remove officers of the United States at will. [14] The Court held that Morrison's holding was a narrow exception only applying to inferior officers. [14]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antonin Scalia</span> US Supreme Court justice from 1986 to 2016

Antonin Gregory Scalia was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectual anchor for the originalist and textualist position in the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative wing. For catalyzing an originalist and textualist movement in American law, he has been described as one of the most influential jurists of the twentieth century, and one of the most important justices in the history of the Supreme Court. Scalia was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018, and the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University was named in his honor.

Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926), was a United States Supreme Court decision ruling that the President has the exclusive power to remove executive branch officials, and does not need the approval of the Senate or any other legislative body. It was distinguished in 1935 by Humphrey's Executor v. United States. However, in Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2020), the Supreme Court interpreted Myers as establishing that the President generally has unencumbered removal power. Myers was the first Supreme Court case to address the president's removal powers.

Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court recognized the power of the U.S. government to detain enemy combatants, including U.S. citizens, but ruled that detainees who are U.S. citizens must have the rights of due process, and the ability to challenge their enemy combatant status before an impartial authority.

Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417 (1998), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held, 6–3, that the line-item veto, as granted in the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, violated the Presentment Clause of the United States Constitution because it impermissibly gave the President of the United States the power to unilaterally amend or repeal parts of statutes that had been duly passed by the United States Congress. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the six-justice majority that the line-item veto gave the President power over legislation unintended by the Constitution, and was therefore an overstep in their duties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethics in Government Act</span> United States federal law

The Ethics in Government Act of 1978 is a United States federal law that was passed in the wake of the Nixon Watergate scandal and the Saturday Night Massacre. It was intended to fight corruption in government.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States Tax Court</span> United States federal court dealing with tax matters

The United States Tax Court is a federal trial court of record established by Congress under Article I of the U.S. Constitution, section 8 of which provides that the Congress has the power to "constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court". The Tax Court specializes in adjudicating disputes over federal income tax, generally prior to the time at which formal tax assessments are made by the Internal Revenue Service.

<i>Hamdan v. Rumsfeld</i> 2006 U.S. Supreme Court case

Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay violated both the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the Geneva Conventions ratified by the U.S.

The unitary executive theory is a normative theory of United States constitutional law which holds that the President of the United States possesses the power to control the entire federal executive branch. The doctrine is rooted in Article Two of the United States Constitution, which vests "the executive Power" of the United States in the President. Although that general principle is widely accepted among legal scholars, there is disagreement about the strength and scope of the doctrine. In 2008, Steven Calabresi and Christopher Yoo described the unitary executive theory as ensuring "the federal government will execute the law in a consistent manner and in accordance with the president’s wishes." This stands in contrast to other scholarly literature, such as MacKenzie in 2008 and Crouch, Rozell, and Sollenberger in 2020, that stresses the fact that federal employees have to faithfully execute the laws enacted according to the process prescribed in the U.S. Constitution.

Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U.S. 211 (1995), was a landmark case about separation of powers in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that Congress may not retroactively require federal courts to reopen final judgments. Writing for the Court, Justice Scalia asserted that such action amounted to an unauthorized encroachment by Congress upon the powers of the judiciary and therefore violated the constitutional principle of separation of powers.

The Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution empowers the President of the United States to nominate and, with the advice and consent (confirmation) of the United States Senate, appoint public officials. Although the Senate must confirm certain principal officers, Congress may by law invest the appointment of "inferior" officers to the President alone, or to courts of law or heads of departments.

Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935), was a Supreme Court of the United States case decided regarding whether the United States President has the power to remove executive officials of a quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial administrative body for reasons other than what is allowed by Congress. The Court held that the President did not have this power. However, Humphrey's has been distinguished by Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In Seila, Chief Justice John Roberts described Humphrey's as holding that Congress may occasionally create independent agencies with removal only for cause if such agencies share the characteristics of the FTC in 1935.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Rehnquist</span> Chief Justice of the United States from 1986 to 2005

William Hubbs Rehnquist was an American attorney and jurist who served on the U.S. Supreme Court for 33 years. Rehnquist was an associate justice from 1972 to 1986 and the 16th chief justice from 1986 until his death in 2005. Considered a staunch conservative, Rehnquist favored a conception of federalism that emphasized the Tenth Amendment's reservation of powers to the states. Under this view of federalism, the Court, for the first time since the 1930s, struck down an act of Congress as exceeding its power under the Commerce Clause.

<i>Cuomo v. Clearing House Assn, L.L.C.</i> 2009 United States Supreme Court case

Cuomo v. Clearing House Association, L.L.C., 557 U.S. 519 (2009), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court. In a 5–4 decision, the court determined that a federal banking regulation did not pre-empt the ability of states to enforce their own fair-lending laws. The Court determined that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is the sole regulator of national banks but it does not have the authority under the National Bank Act to pre-empt state law enforcement against national banks.

<i>Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board</i> 2010 United States Supreme Court case

Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, 561 U.S. 477 (2010), was a 5–4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that laws enabling inferior officers of the United States to be insulated from the Presidential removal authority with two levels of "for cause" removal violated Article Two of the United States Constitution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Josephine Staton</span> American judge (born 1961)

Josephine Laura Staton is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Consumer Financial Protection Bureau</span> United States government agency

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for consumer protection in the financial sector. CFPB's jurisdiction includes banks, credit unions, securities firms, payday lenders, mortgage-servicing operations, foreclosure relief services, debt collectors, and other financial companies operating in the United States. Since its founding, the CFPB has used technology tools to monitor how financial entities used social media and algorithms to target consumers.

Bank Markazi v. Peterson, 578 U.S. 212 (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case that found that a law which only applied to a specific case, identified by docket number, and eliminated all of the defenses one party had raised does not violate the separation of powers in the United States Constitution between the legislative (Congress) and judicial branches of government. The plaintiffs, in the case had initially obtained judgments against Iran for its role in supporting state-sponsored terrorism, particularly the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings and 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, and sought execution against a bank account in New York held, through European intermediaries, on behalf of Bank Markazi, the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The plaintiffs obtained court orders preventing the transfer of funds from the account in 2008 and initiated their lawsuit in 2010. Bank Markazi raised several defenses, including that the account was not an asset of the bank, but rather an asset of its European intermediary, under both New York state property law and §201(a) of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act. In response to concerns that existing laws were insufficient for the account to be used to settle the judgments, Congress added an amendment to a 2012 bill, codified after enactment as 22 U.S.C. § 8772, that identified the pending lawsuit by docket number, applied only to the assets in the identified case, and effectively abrogated every legal basis available to Bank Markazi to prevent the plaintiffs from executing their claims against the account. Bank Markazi then argued that § 8772 was an unconstitutional breach of the separation of power between the legislative and judicial branches of government, because it effectively directed a particular result in a single case without changing the generally applicable law. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and, on appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit both upheld the constitutionality of § 8772 and cleared the way for the plaintiffs to execute their judgments against the account, which held about $1.75 billion in cash.

Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 591 U.S. ____ (2020) was a U.S. Supreme Court case which determined that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), with a single director who could only be removed from office "for cause", violated the separation of powers. Handed down on June 29, 2020, the Court's 5–4 decision created a new test to determine when Congress may limit the power of the president of the United States to remove an officer of the United States from office.

Collins v. Yellen, 594 U.S. ___ (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with the structure of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). The case follows on the Court's prior ruling in Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which found that the establishing structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), with a single director who could only be removed from office "for cause", violated the separation of powers; the FHFA shares a similar structure as the CFPB. The case extends the legal challenge to the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2008.

The Decision of 1789 refers to a month-long constitutional debate that occurred during the first session of the United States House of Representatives as to whether Article Two of the United States Constitution granted the president the power to remove officers of the United States at will. It has been called "the first significant legislative construction of the Constitution". The debate centered around "a bill that would create a Department of Foreign Affairs"—the precursor to the Department of State—and which branch of government would have the power to remove officers from that department.

References

  1. 1 2 "The Great Dissent: Justice Scalia's Opinion in Morrison v. Olson | The Federalist Society". Fedsoc.org. October 7, 2018. Retrieved July 27, 2022.
  2. 1 2 "Morrison v. Olson is Bad Law". June 9, 2017.
  3. 1 2 "The Great Dissent: Justice Scalia's Opinion in Morrison v. Olson". Linkedin.com. October 16, 2018. Retrieved July 27, 2022.
  4. 1 2 "Good-bye, Morrison v. Olson - New Civil Liberties Alliance". Nclalegal.org. June 25, 2021. Retrieved July 27, 2022.
  5. 1 2 "Greenhouse Morrison Olson". National Review. September 12, 2016. Retrieved July 27, 2022.
  6. 1 2 "Blank Check; Ethics in Government: The Price of Good Intentions". The New York Times . February 1, 1998. Retrieved July 27, 2022.
  7. 1 2 Bravin, Nick (1998). "Is Morrison v. Olson Still Good Law? The Court's New Appointments Clause Jurisprudence". Columbia Law Review. 98 (4): 1103–1144. doi:10.2307/1123356. JSTOR   1123356.
  8. 1 2 Kevin M. Stack (February 2009). "The Story of Morrison v. Olson: The Independent Counsel and Independent Agencies in Watergate's Wake".
  9. ↑ Morrison, 487 U.S. at 705-06 (Scalia, J., dissenting).
  10. ↑ Morrison, 487 U.S. at 733 (Scalia, J., dissenting).
  11. ↑ "Dole wants investigation of Walsh, others pardoned". Detroit Free Press. Detroit, Michigan. November 9, 1992. p. 5 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. ↑ Wittes, Benjamin (August 16, 1998). "A Kiss of Death for Independent Counsels". Clarion-Ledger . Jackson, Mississippi. p. 73 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ↑ Hulse, Carl; Kirkpatrick, David D. (December 2, 2005). "After Memo, Democrats Are Taking Firmer Stance Against Alito Nomination". The New York Times.
  14. 1 2 3 Mashaw, Seila (August 27, 2020). "Of Angels, Pins, and For-Cause Removal: A Requiem for the Passive Virtues". The University of Chicago Law Review Online. Retrieved November 30, 2021.
  15. ↑ Senior, Jennifer (October 6, 2013). "In Conversation: Antonin Scalia". New York . Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  16. ↑ http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/files/Libby_060427_Fitz_Constitutional.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.