174
Opinion of the Court
that they should be again appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. It cannot be doubted, and it has frequently been the case, that Congress may increase the power and duties of an existing office without thereby rendering it necessary that the incumbent should be again nominated and appointed." Id., at 300-301.
The present cases before us differ from Shoemaker in several respects, at least one of which is significant for purposes of Appointments Clause analysis. In Shoemaker, Congress assigned new duties to two existing offices, each of which was held by a single officer. This no doubt prompted the Court's description of the argument as being that "while Congress may create an office, it cannot appoint the officer." By looking to whether the additional duties assigned to the offices were "germane," the Court sought to ensure that Congress was not circumventing the Appointments Clause by unilaterally appointing an incumbent to a new and distinct office. But here the statute authorized an indefinite number of military judges, who could be designated from among hundreds or perhaps thousands of qualified commissioned officers. In short, there is no ground for suspicion here that Congress was trying to both create an office and also select a particular individual to fill the office. Nor has Congress effected a "diffusion of the appointment power," about which this Court expressed concern in Freytag, supra, at 878.
Even if we assume, arguendo, that the principle of "germaneness" applies to the present situation, we think that principle is satisfied here. By enacting the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 1950, and through subsequent statutory changes, Congress has gradually changed the system of military justice so that it has come to more closely resemble the civilian system. But the military in important respects remains a "specialized society separate from civilian society," Parker v. Levy, 417 U. S. 733, 743 (1974). Although military
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