Professor Michael Gerhardt served as an expert witness before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Government Feb. 1. The Oversight Committee held a hearing, "Uncharted Territory: What are the Consequences of President Obama's Unprecedented 'Recess' Appointments,” to review the legal and policy implications of President Obama's recess appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board.
Gerhardt, Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor in Constitutional Law and director of the Center for Law and Government, argued that the President’s actions were sound and not unprecedented. He further commented that the President’s appointments may be “the only feasible means by which these positions will be filled in the foreseeable future.”
“The fact that these appointments have been made increases the likelihood that the affected agencies will be able to fulfill their statutory objectives,” Gerhardt says in his prepared testimony. “Whereas allowing the positions to remain unfilled leaves many Americans unsure about whether or when these statutory objectives may ever be realized.”
Gerhardt’s
testimony was quoted in the Washington Post.
He was also quoted in a Jan. 12 story about the appointments in the U.S. News and World Report.
-February 1, 2012