In case you were wondering if it’s actually legal for President Trump to leave a lot of Executive Branch jobs empty, here’s Christopher Fonzone and Joshua Geltzer on Lawfare to answer that question – with a sophisticated version of It Depends. Then they get to the heart of the matter:
But these questions, to our mind, are secondary; they are about the redressability of the president’s illegal conduct, not about the conduct itself. Many “[c]laims concerning constitutional violations . . . cannot be addressed to the courts,” but understanding the legal nature of those issues helps all of us appreciate their significance. The first and most important point, as laid about above, is that the president’s desire to leave certain Executive Branch jobs unfilled “because they’re unnecessary” raises significant statutory and constitutional questions that shouldn’t be overlooked. If he feels otherwise—if, for example, he regards these statutes as properly read not to demand the filling of these roles, or if he views such a demand as unconstitutional—then he owes it to the American public to make explicit his understanding of the statutes and the requirements they impose on him as well as the legal reasoning behind that understanding. Without that, he’s not just failing to govern—he’s actively defying the law.
