JONATHAN TURLEY: It was a fascinating decision. I testified at the hearing, the Judiciary Hearing Committee after the appointments were made. I testified at that time I believed they were flagrantly unconstitutional. They are close questions, as I said to the committee in constitutional law, but this was not one of them. I’m still astonished that the Obama administration litigated this case. They abandoned a long principle of past presidents not to push these to final decision. This decision today wiped out decades of efforts by prior presidents to try to increase their authority in this area. It’s a major major loss. But it's the right decision.



At the end of the day, it means the president again violated the separation of powers. This is becoming something of a serial violation for the president. What the president did here I can't imagine any competent lawyer would look at it and say, yes, you do have that authority. It was clearly an effort to circumvent. There was a paragraph in this long 100 page opinion that has been overlooked. The paragraph from the court says that this clause is not there for branches to work-around other branches. It essentially was a veiled reference to this concept of “going it alone.” The court said there's a clear purpose to this clause. It’s not there to be used effectively as a weapon. I think that's a shot across the bow in a lot of these different areas.