Presidential Recess Appointments

Last January, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued an opinion holding that the Senate had not in fact "recessed" in January 2012 when President Obama appointed three new members of the National Relations Board, the validity of these and other similarly made appointments during a Congressional session were cast into serious doubt.  Recess appointments and the limits on a president's power to make them quickly became a legal "hot topic."  The NLRB has announced its intention to seek Supreme Court review.

This week, a Congressional Research Service report discussing recess appointments and what impact the Court of Appeals decision, if upheld, will have on recent and future presidential appointments, became available here.  Like all CRS reports, this is an excellent resource for reliable, objective analysis of a debated issue, written by nonpartisan staff in the Congressional Research Service within the Library of Congress.  To find CRS reports on a wide variety of policy-related topics for research papers or legislative histories, try the links listed in this helpful guide from the University of Washington's Gallagher Law Library.

Acknowledgment to The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times.  

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

It's All Presidential

From the Presidential Inauguration to executive orders on gun control and Cabinet appointments, the President and presidential documents have been much in the news lately.  One of the best overall sources combining various types of presidential documents, election data, and an audio/visual archive, is the American Presidency Project.  Established in 1999 as a collaboration between professors John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters at the University of California, Santa Barbara, this free internet resource now provides searchable access to over 103,000 documents, including the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Washington - Taft (1789-1913); the Public Papers of the Presidents from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush; and presidential documents from the first term of Barack Obama. 

For an official source of presidential documents in PDF, try the Government Printing Office's website, FDsys. Here you'll find easy access to the Compilation of Presidential Documents Collection, with supplementary materials such as nominations and press releases. Coverage is from 1993 to the current week. For access on the go, GPO Mobile's Presidential Documents app provides mobile access to documents released by the White House Press Secretary beginning in 2009, including searchable executive orders, speeches, statements, approved acts, nominations, and press releases.  The app works with any smart phone at http://m.gpo.gov/dcpd.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

The Government's App Initiative

The President Wants More Mobile Apps!

Do you want to find government information with the click of a 'button?'  The new presidential initiative is to provide more mobile apps for users, hopefully making goverment information more accessible.

"President Barack Obama has ordered all government agencies to offer more of their services in the form of mobile apps.
A new memo called “Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People” requires each agency to make at least two services, used by the public, available on mobile devices within 12 months.

“For far too long, the American people have been forced to navigate a labyrinth of information across different government programs in order to find the services they need,” says the memo.

“Americans deserve a government that works for them anytime, anywhere, and on any device,” Obama said in a statement."

Read more about it at Mashable here: http://on.mash.to/Kd7w3G

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Visual History of the Supreme Court

Timeplots.com has created a beautiful poster/webpage which diagrams the history of the U.S. Supreme Court, including all of its justices, who appointed them, when they served, and landmark decisions. It is viewable here. A snapshot of part of it is below.

This is part of a three-part project which also includes wonderful diagrams of the histories of the U.S. Senate and the Presidency.





Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat