We can roughly place the lawyers in the executive branch along a continuum based on what factors led them to being hired and accepting their executive branch legal position, with “political lawyers” on one end of the continuum.
The fact that their primary loyalty is to the institution rather than the person suggests that tenured lawyers may perform an important function in building and maintaining the institutional capital of the Executive Branch.”). 101.
From the President, to the Vice President, to the Cabinet, learn more about the Executive Branch of the government of the United States The power of the Executive Branch is vested in the President of the United States, who also acts as head of state and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.
The civil service lawyer might have been hired and have accepted an executive branch legal position because of a skepticism about presidential power (a privacy officer in DHS or a lawyer in the Inspector General’s Office at the Department of Justice, for instance).
the executive branchThe Attorney General is part of the executive branch. The Attorney General is in charge of the Department of Justice (commonly known as the DOJ). Among other things, the DOJ enforces federal criminal law in the United States.
Subject to the powers and duties of the Governor, the Attorney General shall be the chief law officer of the State. It shall be the duty of the Attorney General to see that the laws of the State are uniformly and adequately enforced.
The Attorney GeneralThe Attorney General is the head of the DOJ and chief law enforcement officer of the federal government.
The executive branch carries out and enforces laws. It includes the president, vice president, the Cabinet, executive departments, independent agencies, and other boards, commissions, and committees. American citizens have the right to vote for the president and vice president through free, confidential ballots.
The United States solicitor generalThe United States solicitor general represents the federal government of the United States before the Supreme Court of the United States. The solicitor general determines the legal position that the United States will take in the Supreme Court.
Attorneys general serve as the chief law enforcement official and often head the state's Department of Justice. They operate as legal advisors to state agencies or officials and represent the state in lawsuits.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) is a United States executive department formed in 1789 to assist the president and Cabinet in matters concerning the law and to prosecute U.S. Supreme Court cases for the federal government.
The Department of the Interior manages public lands and minerals, national parks, and wildlife refuges and upholds Federal trust responsibilities to Indian tribes and Native Alaskans. Additionally, Interior is responsible for endangered species conservation and other environmental conservation efforts.
United StatesUnited States Department of Justice / Jurisdiction
The Executive Office of the President (EOP) comprises four agencies that advise the president in key policy areas: the White House Office, the National Security Council, the Council of Economic Advisors, and the Office of Management and Budget.
15 executive departmentsThere are currently 15 executive departments. Each department is headed by a "secretary" of their respective department, with the exception of the Department of Justice, whose head is known as the "attorney general".
Executive Branch: President, Vice President, and The Cabinet.
The executive branch is composed of the president, vice president, and Cabinet members. President. The president is the head of state, head of the U.S. government, and the commander-in-chief of the U.S. military. Vice President.
The executive branch carries out and enforces laws. It includes the president, vice president, the Cabinet, executive departments, independent agencies, and other boards, commissions, and committees. American citizens have the right to vote for the president and vice president through free, confidential ballots.
Learn the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government and see a lesson plan for teachers.
The judicial branch of government is made up of the court system. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is the highest court in the country. The nine justices are nominated by the president and must be approved by the Senate (with at least 51 votes). Other Federal Courts.
The vice president can be elected and serve an unlimited number of four-year terms as vice president, even under a different president. The Cabinet —Cabinet members serve as advisors to the president. They include the vice president, heads of executive departments, and other high-ranking government officials.
The president is the head of state, head of the U.S. government, and the commander-in-chief of the U.S. military. Vice President. The vice president not only supports the president but also acts as the presiding officer of the Senate. Cabinet.
The Constitution of the United States divides the federal government into three branches to make sure no individual or group will have too much power:
The executive departments are the administrative arms of the President of the United States. There are currently 15 executive departments.
Department of Business and Labor, proposed by President Lyndon Johnson.
Department of Human Resources, proposed by President Richard Nixon; essentially a revised Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Department of Economic Affairs, proposed by President Richard Nixon; essentially a consolidation of the Departments of Commerce, Labor, and Agriculture.
Department of Business, proposed by President Barack Obama as a consolidation of the U.S. Department of Commerce's core business and trade functions, the Small Business Administration, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency.
Trade Representative with the single goal of creating and defending good American jobs.
Department of Economic Affairs, proposed by President Richard Nixon; essentially a consolidation of the Departments of Commerce, Labor, and Agriculture.
Department of Natural Resources, proposed by the Eisenhower administration, President Richard Nixon, the 1976 GOP national platform, and by Bill Daley (as a consolidation of the Departments of the Interior and Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency).
Including members of the armed forces, the Executive Branch employs more than 4 million Americans.
The Executive Bran ch. The Legislative Branch. The Judicial Branch. The Constitution. Federal Agencies & Commissions. State & Local Government. Elections & Voting. The power of the Executive Branch is vested in the President of the United States, who also acts as head of state and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.
Perhaps the most visible parts of the EOP are the White House Communications Office and Press Secretary’s Office.
The Cabinet and independent Federal agencies are responsible for the day-to-day enforcement and administration of Federal laws. These departments and agencies have missions and responsibilities as widely divergent as those of the Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency, the Social Security Administration, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The department’s headquarters is at the Pentagon.
The Executive Branch conducts diplomacy with other nations, and the President has the power to negotiate and sign treaties, which must be ratified by two-thirds of the Senate. The President can issue executive orders, which direct executive officers or clarify and help implement existing laws.
By tradition, the President and the First Family live in the White House in Washington , D.C., also the location of the President’s Oval Office and the offices of his senior staff. When the President travels by plane, his aircraft is designated Air Force One; he may also use a Marine Corps helicopter, known as Marine One when the President is on board. For ground travel, the President uses an armored Presidential vehicle.
These lawyers are hired because the law permits partisan political considerations by making the position a presidential appointment (directly by the President or by one of his surrogates), and/or because the norms of the position otherwise encourage or even facilitate partisan political considerations. 50 Given these hiring dynamics, certain kinds of lawyers select into these positions, and then these lawyers face certain incentives.
There are, by law, as many as eight thousand positions in the executive branch to be filled by the President or someone nominated by the President. 51 Many of these political appointments are legal positions. But looking just at the formal status of the position, as Ackerman, Morrison and the literature tend to do, understates the total number of lawyers in the executive branch hired due directly or indirectly to partisan politics or the legal qualifications associated with partisan politics.
Morrison’s account has more to say about legal offices besides OLC and WHC, but even then these other legal offices are either unaddressed or largely irrelevant, and certainly not legal protagonists. Morrison argues that OLC “is the most important centralized source of such advice in the executive branch.” 41 He notes that OLC and WHC are obliged to address only some legal issues, 42 and so (although this is not stated explicitly) other legal offices in the executive branch presumably must address the other legal issues. 43 He tries to articulate some guidelines for when OLC in particular should decide issues, and when other executive branch legal offices should. 44
Given his arguments about the flaws of political lawyers, this means political lawyers are responsible for much of our system of government. In this account, then, civil service lawyers play a small role, mostly as compliant and precise agents to the presidential legal principal.
Second, this is because principal-agent dynamics will be different with more rather than fewer political lawyers. Preferences of civil service lawyers might not be changed but might be better monitored by political lawyers if there are more political lawyers. Political lawyers are the bosses, or the principals, in their relationships with civil service lawyers. 68 A principal must have proper and sufficient information to evaluate its agent. 69 If there are more political lawyers relative to civil service lawyers, it will be cheaper for political lawyers to obtain information, monitor, and thereby influence the civil service lawyers, minimizing agency problems. 70 This is even more pronounced for political lawyers because agency problems are reduced when the agent is producing a work product that is easier to evaluate, 71 and civil service lawyers are often producing written products that political lawyers can monitor. For instance, in OLC the greater ease with which political lawyers monitor civil service lawyers is demonstrated by the internal review process: an OLC written opinion can be easily evaluated, and every opinion drafted by a civil service lawyer is reviewed by at least three political appointees (two deputies and the head of the office). 72
The exhaustion created by a political position would not necessarily be relieved in another political position. And a civil service position might be perceived or felt as a career step backward. It should be no surprise, then, that one study found that less than ten percent of all political appointees stayed in the federal government in a civil service capacity after leaving their positions. 62 Because these political lawyers were selected for their positions and selected their positions partly based on political considerations, their positions once leaving government tend to be more political in nature (perhaps working for a partisan-affiliated advocacy group, for instance).
A change in presidential administration will often make a civil service lawyer in ideological disagreement with the new administration want to leave the federal government or switch positions, as happened for liberal lawyers in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division during the Reagan Administration. 52 The Republican political appointee trying to fill what is formally a civil service position, then, might be much more impressed if the applicant had a reference from John Ashcroft than the Obama appointee would be. The job applicant might be more likely to hear of the job opening or be prepared to answer the questions to be asked during the interview if he or she has relationships with the political appointees or their surrogates. And homophyly is just as powerful in legal networks as in other social networks, so the applicant is more likely to hear of the job or the interview questions if they are from the conservative political-legal network applying for the position in a Republican Administration or the liberal political-legal network applying during a Democratic Administration. The press has documented evidence of such political lawyer hiring existing even for positions not formally classified as politically appointed, under both Republican 53 and Democratic administrations. 54