666
Opinion of Souter, J.
tive Branch tribunal comparable to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces that reviews the work of the Tax Court; its decisions are appealable only to courts of the Third Branch. 26 U. S. C. § 7482. And second, there is no officer comparable to a Judge Advocate General who supervises the work of the Tax Court, with power to determine its procedural rules, to remove any judge without cause, and to order any decision submitted for review. Freytag does not control our decision here.
* * *
We conclude that 49 U. S. C. § 323(a) authorizes the Secretary of Transportation to appoint judges of the Coast Guard Court of Criminal Appeals; and that such appointment is in conformity with the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, since those judges are "inferior Officers" within the meaning of that provision, by reason of the supervision over their work exercised by the General Counsel of the Department of Transportation in his capacity as Judge Advocate General and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. The judicial appointments at issue in this case are therefore valid.
Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces with respect to each petitioner.
It is so ordered.
Justice Souter, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I join in Parts I and II of the Court's opinion and agree with the reasoning in Part III insofar as it describes an important, and even necessary, reason for holding judges of the Coast Guard Court of Criminal Appeals to be inferior officers within the meaning of the Appointments Clause, U. S. Const., Art. II, § 2, cl. 2. The Court states that "[g]enerally speaking, the term 'inferior officer' connotes a relationship [of supervision and direction] with some higher
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