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Obama’s appointment of Hillary as Sec. of State runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution

Posted 01 Dec 2008 in Barack Obama, corruption, Hillary Clinton

Allow me a rhetorical question.

Since Barack Obama has been widely hyped due to his being a constitutional law professor, shouldn’t he realize that his appointment of Senator Hillary Clinton to the post of Secretary of State is unconstitutional? Article One, Section Six (the so-called “Emolument Clause”) expressly prohibits senators or representatives from taking a civil office if the legislator has voted to increase pay for that job.

“No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.”

Why does this matter? January 7, 2008, President Bush signed an executive order implementing the federal employee pay raise for 2008 that was included in the Congressionally-approved Omnibus Spending Bill for 2008 (HR 2764). Therefore, Hillary is constitutionally barred from service in the cabinet of the Executive branch.

University of St. Thomas law professor Michael Stokes Paulson has written on the application of the Emoluments Clause in the past, and has this to say regarding the Clinton appointment:

As I understand it, President Bush’s executive order from earlier this year “encreased” the “Emoluments” (salary) of the office of Secretary of State. Last I checked, Hillary Clinton was an elected Senator from New York at the time. Were she to be appointed to the civil Office of Secretary of State, she would be being appointed to an office for which “the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased” during the time for which she was elected to serve as Senator. The plain language of the Emoluments Clause would thus appear to bar her appointment … if the Constitution is taken seriously (which it more than occasionally isn’t on these matters, of course).
[…]
Unless one views the Constitution’s rules as rules that may be dispensed with when inconvenient; or as not really stating rules at all (but “standards” or “principles” to be viewed at more-convenient levels of generality); or as not applicable where a lawsuit might not be brought; or as not applicable to Democratic administrations, then the plain linguistic meaning of this chunk of constitutional text forbids the appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. I wouldn’t bet on this actually preventing the appointment, however. It didn’t stop Lloyd Bentsen from becoming Secretary of [Treasury]. But it does make an interesting first test of how serious Barack Obama will be about taking the Constitution’s actual words seriously. We know he thinks the Constitution should be viewed as authorizing judicial redistribution of wealth. But we don’t know what he thinks about provisions of the Constitution that do not need to be invented, but are actually there in the document.

Obama’s choice of Sen. Clinton as his Secretary of State is yet another unfortunate example of his ongoing desire to “break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution” in order to achieve his agenda.

Posted by FullMetalPatriot
12th gen. American, Constitutionalist, Harley-riding Texan, gun owner & NRA member, blogger, illustrator, Florida Gator alumnus. #TCOT

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