{"id":1487,"date":"2023-06-11T13:00:26","date_gmt":"2023-06-11T17:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/in-print\/volume-21-issue-1-winter-2023\/the-strength-of-a-giant-the-administrative-state-and-the-united-states-patent-trademark-office\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:11:37","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:11:37","slug":"the-strength-of-a-giant-the-administrative-state-and-the-united-states-patent-trademark-office","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/in-print-2\/volume-21-issue-1-winter-2023\/the-strength-of-a-giant-the-administrative-state-and-the-united-states-patent-trademark-office\/","title":{"rendered":"The Strength of a Giant: The Administrative State and the United States Patent &amp; Trademark Office"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p2\">For Appointments Clause purposes, the Supreme Court historically has refused to draw a bright line between a <span class=\"s2\">\u201c<\/span>principal officer<span class=\"s2\">\u201d <\/span>and an <span class=\"s2\">\u201c<\/span>inferior officer.<span class=\"s2\">\u201d <\/span>The vague separation between the officer ranks has caused lower courts and administrative law scholars to apply inconsistent standards in determining whether an officer is a principal or inferior. Recently, however, <em>United States v.<\/em> <em>Arthrex<\/em> adopted a bright line rule for distinguishing between officers that need to go through the formal constitutional process for appointment and officers that do not. This Essay argues that the <em>Arthrex<\/em> decision unduly burdens both the Senate and the Executive by imposing a rigid, unforgiving standard for addressing the principal-inferior officer distinction which implicitly overruled binding precedent. An examination of the Appointments Clause through a textu-alist, a purposivist, and an originalist lens suggests that the Supreme Court\u2019s historic jurisprudence in the area adequately addresses the accountability, transparency, and authority concerns inherent in the appointments procedures.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Keep Reading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2023\/06\/GT-GLPP230010.pdf\">The Strength of a Giant: The Administrative State and the United States Patent &amp; Trademark Office<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For Appointments Clause purposes, the Supreme Court historically has refused to draw a bright line between a \u201cprincipal officer\u201d and an \u201cinferior officer.\u201d The vague separation between the officer ranks [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"parent":1430,"menu_order":9,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-1487","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1487"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1879,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1487\/revisions\/1879"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}