Temporary Appointment to Senate Vacancies Rule

The Temporary Appointment to Senate Vacancies Rule governs who may temporarily fill a vacant Senate seat and for how long: when a vacancy occurs during a state legislature’s recess, that state’s executive may appoint someone until the legislature next meets and fills the seat. In the constitutional argument presented here, this precise allocation of authority also defeats a charge that the President can make such appointments under a different recess-appointments provision.

Rule and Operation

The rule addresses vacancies in the Senate caused by resignation or otherwise. It gives the temporary appointment power to the executive of the state whose representation is vacant, but only when the state legislature is in recess. The appointment is provisional: it continues until the legislature’s next meeting, when that body is to fill the vacancy.

The arrangement follows the constitution’s separate assignment of the permanent choice of senators to state legislatures. By tying an interim appointment to the affected legislature’s recess and ending it at that legislature’s next meeting, the provision keeps the temporary measure connected to the institution responsible for the lasting appointment.

Distinction from Federal Recess Appointments

The argument contrasts this state-level vacancy rule with a provision authorizing the President, acting alone, to make temporary appointments during a recess of the Senate. Those commissions expire at the end of the Senate’s next session. The difference in the bodies whose recess matters—and in the period that ends the appointment—is central: the federal provision concerns officers in whose appointment the Senate has a role, whereas senators are chosen by state legislatures.

If the federal provision were intended to cover Senate seats, the argument reasons, its timing would naturally refer to the recess of the state legislatures, which make permanent senatorial appointments. Its temporary terms would likewise run to the next meeting of the relevant state legislature, not to the end of the national Senate’s next session. The distinct wording and timetable therefore support distinct powers rather than overlapping presidential authority over Senate vacancies.

Interpretive and Political Significance

The rule’s express language is presented as conclusive: state executives may make temporary appointments when their legislatures are away, and those legislatures resume responsibility at their next meeting. That direct grant leaves no need to infer a parallel power for the President from the provision governing federal appointments.

The author treats the contrary claim not as an innocent ambiguity but as a deliberate misrepresentation of the proposed Constitution. The rule thus serves both as a specific allocation of appointment authority and as a test case in the broader dispute over whether constitutional provisions are being read fairly. The larger argument emphasizes public accountability: where the President nominates and the Senate judges a nomination, the public can distinguish responsibility for a bad nomination from responsibility for rejecting a good one; Senate vacancies, by contrast, are expressly assigned to state executives for the interim and to state legislatures for the permanent choice.