SCOTUS Declines To Rule On Matthew Whitaker’s Appointment As Acting Attorney General
BY Herschel Smith
5 years, 10 months ago
CNBC:
In an unusual maneuver, Goldstein also used the case to raise the question of whether Trump’s acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, was constitutionally appointed.
Trump appointed Whitaker in November after forcing out Jeff Sessions. Critics immediately pounced on the appointment, arguing that it was unlawful because Whitaker had not been confirmed by the Senate to the post he held at the time of his elevation to acting attorney general.
Goldstein made his client’s gun rights case into a vehicle for resolving the issue and urged the justices to resolve both matters. He did so simply by asking the court to change the name of the case.
He asked the court to name the case Barry Michaels v. Rod Rosenstein, rather than Barry Michaels v. Matthew Whitaker. In briefs, Goldstein acknowledged that his argument was unusual but said he saw the issue as urgent.
“Yes, the Court can blink at that reality, decline to act, and move on,” Goldstein wrote in one November brief. “But history will regret that it did.”
The court declined Goldstein’s request to change the name of the case in addition to the underlying 2nd Amendment question.
Presumably, thus goes down one objection to the Trump bump stock ban, i.e., that it was approved by an unconstitutional AG (not the subject of this CNBC article). It was, but apparently the Supreme Court doesn’t care to visit the question.
On January 16, 2019 at 12:11 pm, Chris Mallory said:
Slightly OT:
Turns out Trump’s pick to be the new AG was AG under Daddy Bush during the Ruby Ridge murder spree by the Feebs and worked to make sure Horiuchi would have his state charges dropped.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/william-barrs-connection-to-ruby-ridge-defending-fbi-snipers/
On January 16, 2019 at 12:27 pm, Jack said:
Regardless of Trump or guns or Whittaker or Barr, the constitutionality of the interim AG was a stupid argument to make, a distraction, and provides an excuse for SCOTUS to ignore the case. Should a court declare the regulations unconstitutional because of the interim AG status, the administration will simply re-issue the regulations under the next AG.
The correct argument is that the BATF/DOJ cannot arbitrarily change laws passed by Congress and codified in the USCode.
The lawsuits should seek to focus on that singular issue, and make this case not about guns, but about regulations vs laws and the abilities of administrative agencies as controlled by Congress, and specifically the APA Administrative Procedures Act of 1946.
The argument is that if this regulation is allowed to stand, any administrative agency can re-write and re-define any term at any time, overruling the will of Congress and the will of the people. And that is both unconstitutional and something the people will not accept.