John Jay Hooker Quotes
It is plain that, when it comes to inferior officers, Congress itself can pass a law sending these nominees to the President with him having the authority to put them on the bench without the advice and consent of the Senate.
Hooker, John Jay. John Jay Hooker's Blog, 2005.
The issue of how the federal judiciary would be selected was one of the more hotly debated issues during the Constitutional Convention.
See {588514} for an additional take on the subject.
The Supreme Court had decided to hear an important case on gun rights. Cheney discovered that Solicitor General, the Administration’s chief lawyer before the Supreme Court, Paul Clement planned to file a brief that was very different from Cheney’s own personal views. In protest, he signed his name to a much stronger brief filed by 55 pro-gun senators and 250 members of the House of Representatives. The President’s Chief of Staff called Cheney on the carpet for doing something that was unforgivable—the Vice President had publicly criticized the position that the President’s (and the Vice President’s) chief lawyer was taking. This was Cheney’s excuse—ie that he was not protesting as the Vice President but as President of the Senate, the only other Constitutional Role of the Vice President. Bolton let the vice president know that if he ever tried something like this again, he would be frozen out of most government activities. See {633772} . In Bush’s second term Cheney had less and less influence, in part because of his unethical behavior like this.
President Andrew Johnson had been impeached by the House of Representatives and was being tried in by the Senate. A majority of the Senators voted for conviction but the vote was 1 short of the two-thirds that were needed. Johnson remained in office. These were two of the charges against Johnson. A Century later Presidents commonly did both of these. George W. Bush made reappointment of Senate rejected nominees into an art form but after the Johnson trial, these were never to be considered reasons for impeachment again.
This letter was written shortly after the Constitution had been signed by the convention delegates. This difference between Adams and Jefferson would be at the heart of the first great partisan struggle in American history. Adams, as the second President, tried to increase and use the power of the Presidency. Jefferson opposed him, especially when Adams tried to run for a second term. The Adams-led Federalists were pitted against Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans in the first, and perhaps still the most bitter partisan struggle in American political history. The Jeffersonians accused Adams and the Federalists of trying to unravel the American Revolution and revert to a monarchy. The people not only sided with the Democratic Republicans, ousting Adams, but also turned out most of the Federalists. It was the end of the Federalist Party, and a new conservative party—without monarchial tendencies—the Whigs became the new opposition party.
John Jay Hooker, Jr. was an American attorney, entrepreneur, political gadfly and perennial candidate from Nashville, Tennessee, who was the Democratic nominee for Governor of Tennessee in 1970 and 1998.
