Wiener v. United States

• Citation: 357 U.S. 349,78 S.Ct. 1275,2 L.Ed.2d 1377
• Decision Date: 30 June 1958
• Docket Number: No. 52,52
• Parties: Myron WIENER, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES
• Court: United States Supreme Court

357 U.S. 349

78 S.Ct. 1275

2 L.Ed.2d 1377

Myron WIENER, Petitioner,

v UNITED STATES.

No. 52.

Argued Nov. 18, 1957.

Decided June 30, 1958.

Mr. I. H. Wachtel, New York City, for the petitioner.

Sol. Gen. J. Lee Rankin, Washington, D.C., for the respondent.

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER delivered the opinion of the Court.

This is a suit for back pay, based on petitioner's alleged illegal removal as a member of the War Claims Commission. The facts are not in dispute. By the War Claims Act of 1948, 62 Stat. 1240, 50 U.S.C.A. Appendix, § 2001 et seq., Congress established that Commission with 'jurisdiction to receive and adjudicate according to law,' § 3, claims for compensating internees, prisoners of war, and religious organizations, §§ 5, 6 and 7, who suffered personal injury or property damage at the hands of the enemy in connection with World War II. The Commission was to be composed of three persons, at least two of whom were to be members of the bar, to be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Commission was to wind up its affairs not later than three years after the expiration of the time for filing claims, originally limited to two years but extended by successive legislation first to March 1, 1951, 63 Stat. 112, and later to March 31, 1952, 65 Stat. 28. This limit on the Commission's life was the mode by which the tenure of the Commissioners was defined, and Congress made no provision for removal of a Commissioner.

Having been duly nominated by President Truman, the petitioner was confirmed on June 2, 1950, and took office on June 8, following. On his refusal to heed a request for his resignation, he was, on December 10, 1953, removed by President Eisenhower in the following terms: 'I regard it as in the national interest to complete the administration of the War Claims Act of 1948, as amended, with personnel of my own selection.' The following day, the President made recess appointments to the Commission, including petitioner's post. After Congress assembled, the President, on February 15, 1954, sent the names of the new appointees to the Senate. The Senate had not confirmed these nominations when the Commission was abolished, July 1, 1954, by Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1954, 68 Stat. 1279, 5 U.S.C.A. § 133z—15 note, issued pursuant to the Reorganization Act of 1949, 63 Stat. 203, 5 U.S.C.A. § 133z et seq. Thereupon, petitioner brought this proceeding in the Court of Claims for recovery of his salary as a War Claims Commissioner from December 10, 1953, the day of his removal by the President, to June 30, 1954, the last day of the Commission's existence. A divided Court of Claims dismissed the petition, 142 F.Supp. 910, 135 Ct.Cl. 827. We brought the case here, 352 U.S. 980, 77 S.Ct. 382, 1 L.Ed.2d 364, because it presents a variant of the constitutional issue decided in Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602, 55 S.Ct. 869, 79 L.Ed. 1611.^*

Controversy pertaining to the scope and limits of the President's power of removal fills a thick chapter of our political and judicial history. The long stretches of its history, beginning with the very first Congress, with early echoes in the Reports of this Court, were laboriously traversed in Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52, 47 S.Ct. 21, 71 L.Ed. 160, and need not be retraced. President Roosevelt's reliance upon the pronouncements of the Court in that case in removing a member of the Federal Trade Commission on the ground that 'the aims and purposes of the Administration with respect to the work of the Commission can be carried out most effectively with personnel of my own selection' reflected contemporaneous professional opinion regarding the significance of the Myers decision. Speaking through a Chief Justice who himself had been President, the Court did not restrict itself to the immediate issue before it, the President's inherent power to remove a postmaster, obviously an executive official. As of set purpose and not by way of parenthetic casualness, the Court announced that the President had inherent constitutional power of removal also of officials who have 'duties of a quasi-judicial character * * * whose decisions after hearing affect interests of individuals, the discharge of which the President cannot in a particular case properly influence or control.' Myers v. United States, supra, 272 U.S. at page 135, 47 S.Ct. at page 31. This view of presidential power was deemed to flow from his 'constitutional duty of seeing that the laws be faithfully executed.' Ibid.

The assumption was short-lived that the Myers case recognized the President's inherent constitutional power to remove officials, no matter what the relation of the executive to the discharge of their duties and no matter what restrictions Congress may have imposed regarding the nature of their tenure. The versatility of circumstances often mocks a natural desire for definitiveness. Within less than ten years a unanimous Court, in Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602, 55 S.Ct. 869, 79 L.Ed. 1611, narrowly confined the scope of the Myers decision to include only 'all purely executive officers.' 295 U.S. at page 628, 55 S.Ct. at page 874. The Court explicitly 'disapproved' the expressions in Myers supporting the President's inherent constitutional power to remove members of quasi-judicial bodies. 295 U.S. at pages 626—627, 55 S.Ct. at pages 873—874. Congress had given members of the Federal Trade Commission a seven-year term and also provided for the removal of a Commissioner by the President for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office. In the present case, Congress provided for a tenure defined by the relatively short period of time during which the War Claims Commission was to operate—that is, it was to wind up not later than three years after the expiration of the time for filing of claims. But nothing was said in the Act about removal.

This is another instance in which the most appropriate legal significance must be drawn from congressional failure of explicitness. Necessarily this is a problem in prob- abilities. We start with one certainty. The problem of the President's power to remove members of agencies entrusted with duties of the kind with which the War Claims Commission was charged was within the lively knowledge of Congress. Few contests between Congress and the President have so recurringly had the attention of Congress as that pertaining to the power of removal. Not the least significant aspect of the Myers case is that on the Court's special invitation Senator George Wharton Pepper, of Pennsylvania, presented the position of Congress at the bar of this Court.

Humphrey's case was a cause celebre—and not least in the halls of Congress. And what is the essence of the decision in Humphrey's case? It drew a sharp line of cleavage between officials who were part of the Executive establishment and were thus removable by virtue of the President's constitutional powers, and those who are members of a body 'to exercise its judgment without the leave or hindrance of any other official or any department of the government,' 295 U.S. at pages 625—626, 55 S.Ct. at page 873, as to whom a power of removal exists only if Congress may fairly be said to have conferred it. This sharp differentiation derives from the difference in functions between those who are part of the Executive establishment and those whose tasks require absolute freedom from Executive interference. 'For it is quite evident,' again to quote Humphrey's Executor, 'that one who holds his office only during the pleasure of another, cannot be depended upon to maintain an attitude of independence...