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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025

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That is a shockingly bad post by Calabresi. The Constitution explicitly allows Congress to delegate the appointment of inferior officers to the Courts. Calabresi's response is that they can't have meant it because the Constitution sets up a unitary executive, and the clause allowing Congress to delegate appointment of inferior officers to the Courts can only apply to Court clerks and suchlike. [I am not a historian and don't know the reason for the clause, but my guess is that the framers expected the local district judge to be the highest federal official in the sticks, and therefore best-placed to make local interim appointments before a message could get to Washington]

But the only reason why you might think the Constitution sets up a unitary executive is the text of the Constitution and, critically, the Appointments Clause. You can't just say "if I ignore this sub-clause, the vibes of the rest of the text imply X. Because X, this sub-clause should be ignored."

I'm not sure appeals to original intent help here - the framers would have been horrified at the idea of a corps of full-time professional civilian Federal prosecutors, because they didn't want the Federal government to be creating enough civilian criminal law to support one. You should look at the words they wrote, not the vibes here. And the words are clear.

That is just wrong on many points.

First, unitary executive isn’t based solely (or primarily) on the appointments clause but on the theory that the constitution says the executive power is vested in the president.

This was then further explained in the federalist papers.

Second, textualism in constitutional Interpretation is quite dangerous given that (1) constitutions tend to be less built out compared to legislation and (2) they assume fluency with the political backdrop of the late 1700s.

While the text is obviously important, it is necessary to interpret in light of the broader context. The constitution was clearly setting up a system of divided government contrary to the experience under your country’s rule.

Each branch has some power but the idea is that other branches could check them given the divided power.

Inferior officers are of course necessary to carry out the power vested in each branch. So why after setting up a tripartite form of government, would the constitution allow for example courts to appoint all of the inferior officers of the executive? Or, if we are to believe your theory, the constitution permits Congress to vest appointing inferior officers of both the executive and the judicial in say the the head of HHS. So despite making the executive power vested in the president and the judicial power in the courts, the head of HHS is the person who actually gets to choose who the core people in those regimes are therefore making the president and judges basically subsidiary to the head of HHS.

That’s clearly absurd and inconsistent with the context. The more natural therefore construction is that Congress can choose how inferior officers are picked by the president within the executive, or the judges within Art III, or department heads within their department. That is, it’s implied even if it stated.