{"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\/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 has caused lower courts and administrative law scholars to apply inconsistent standards in determining whether an officer is a principal or inferior. Recently, however, United [&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,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1487","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_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}]}}