Weiss v. United States, 510 U.S. 163, 8 (1994)

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170

WEISS v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

therefore, be appointed in the manner prescribed by [the Appointments Clause]"). The parties are also in agreement, and rightly so, that the Appointments Clause applies to military officers. As we said in Buckley, "all officers of the United States are to be appointed in accordance with the Clause. . . . No class or type of officer is excluded because of its special functions." Id., at 132 (emphasis in original).

It follows that those serving as military judges must be appointed pursuant to the Appointments Clause. All of the military judges involved in these cases, however, were already commissioned officers when they were assigned to serve as judges,4 and thus they had already been appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.5 The question we must answer, therefore, is whether these officers needed another appointment pursuant to the Appointments Clause before assuming their judicial duties. Petitioners contend that the position of military judge is so different from other positions to which an officer may be assigned that either Congress has, by implication, required a second appointment, or the Appointments Clause, by constitutional command, requires one. We reject both of these arguments.

Petitioners' argument that Congress by implication has required a separate appointment is based in part on the fact that military judges must possess certain qualifications, in-4 The constitutionality of the provision allowing civilians to be assigned to Courts of Military Review, without being appointed pursuant to the Appointments Clause, obviously presents a quite different question. See Art. 66(a), UCMJ, 10 U. S. C. § 866(a). It is not at issue here.

5 Although the record before us does not contain complete information regarding the military careers of the judges involved in these cases, it is quite possible that they had been appointed more than once before being detailed or assigned to serve as military judges. This is because 10 U. S. C. § 624 requires a new appointment by the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, each time a commissioned officer is promoted to a higher grade—e. g., if a captain is promoted to major, he must receive another appointment.

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