668
Opinion of Souter, J.
rior officer. Thus, under Morrison, the Solicitor General of the United States, for example, may well be a principal officer, despite his statutory "inferiority" to the Attorney General. See, e. g., 28 U. S. C. § 505 (directing Presidential appointment, with the advice and consent of the Senate, of a Solicitor General to "assist the Attorney General in the performance of his duties"). The mere existence of a "superior" officer is not dispositive.
In this case, as the Court persuasively shows, the Judge Advocate General has substantial supervisory authority over the judges of the Coast Guard Court of Criminal Appeals. As the Court notes, the Judge Advocate General prescribes rules of procedure for the Court of Criminal Appeals, formulates policies for review of court-martial cases, and is authorized to remove judges from their judicial assignments without cause. See ante, at 664. While these facts establish that the condition of supervision and control necessary for inferior officer status has been met, I am wary of treating them as sufficient to demonstrate that the judges of the Court of Criminal Appeals are actually inferior officers under the Constitution.
In having to go beyond the Court's opinion to decide that the criminal appeals judges are inferior officers, I do not claim the convenience of a single sufficient condition, and, indeed, at this stage of the Court's thinking on the matter, I would not try to derive a single rule of sufficiency. What is needed, instead, is a detailed look at the powers and duties of these judges to see whether reasons favoring their inferior officer status within the constitutional scheme weigh more heavily than those to the contrary. Having tried to do this in a concurring opinion in Weiss v. United States, 510 U. S. 163, 182 (1994), I will not repeat the essay. See id., at 192- 194 (reviewing the Morrison factors, including tenure, jurisdiction, duties, and removal; concluding that because it is "hard to say with any certainty" whether Courts of Military Review judges should be considered principal or inferior of-
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