186
Souter, J., concurring
exclusive Presidential appointment power "may be abused," the Appointments Clause provides the "salutary check" of Senate confirmation, and "[t]he consciousness of this check will make the president more circumspect, and deliberate in his nominations for office").
In the Framers' thinking, the process on which they settled for selecting principal officers would ensure "judicious" appointments not only by empowering the President and the Senate to check each other, but also by allowing the public to hold the President and Senators accountable for injudicious appointments. "[T]he circumstances attending an appointment [of a principal officer], from the mode of conducting it, would naturally become matters of notoriety," Hamilton wrote; "and the public would be at no loss to determine what part had been performed by the different actors." The Federalist No. 77, at 517. As a result,
"[t]he blame of a bad nomination would fall upon the president singly and absolutely. The censure of rejecting a good one would lie entirely at the door of the senate; aggravated by the consideration of their having counteracted the good intentions of the executive. If an ill appointment should be made the executive for nominating and the senate for approving would participate though in different degrees in the opprobrium and disgrace." Ibid.
The strategy by which the Framers sought to ensure judicious appointments of principal officers is, then, familiar enough: the Appointments Clause separates the Government's power but also provides for a degree of intermingling, all to ensure accountability and "preclude the exercise of arbitrary power." Myers v. United States, 272 U. S., at 293 (Brandeis, J., dissenting).
The strict requirements of nomination by the President and confirmation by the Senate were not carried over to the appointment of inferior officers. A degree of flexibility was
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