executive departments, or the courts to appoint inferior officials. The Senate has a long-standing practice of permitting motions to reconsider previous decisions. In 1931, the Senate granted advice and consent to the president on the appointment of a member of the Federal Power Commission. The officer in question was sworn in, but the Senate, under the guise of a motion to reconsider, rescinded the advice and consent. In the writ of quo warranto proceedings that followed, the Supreme Court ruled that the Senate was not permitted to rescind advice and consent after the officer had been installed. After the Senate grants advice and consent, however, the president is under no compulsion to commission the officer. It has not been settled whether the president has the prerogative to withhold a commission after having signed it. This issue played a large part in the seminal court case Marbury v. Madison. At times the president has asserted the power to remove individuals from office. Congress has often explicitly limited the president's power to remove; during the Reconstruction Era, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, purportedly preventing Andrew Johnson from removing, without the advice and consent of the Senate, anyone appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate. President Johnson ignored the Act, and was later impeached and acquitted. The constitutionality of the Act was not immediately settled. In Myers v. United States, the Supreme Court held that Congress could not limit the president's power to remove an executive officer (the Postmaster General), but in Humphrey's Executor v. United States, it upheld Congress's authority to restrict the president's power to remove officers of the Federal Trade Commission, an "administrative body [that] cannot in any proper sense be characterized as an arm or an eye of the executive." Congress may repeal the legislation that authorizes the appointment of an executive officer. But it "cannot reserve for itself the power of an officer charged with the execution of the laws except by impeachment." Clause 3: Recess appointments The president may fill critical federal executive and judicial branch vacancies unilaterally but temporarily when the Senate is in recess, and thus unavailable to provide advice and consent. Such appointments expire at the end of the next Senate session. To continue to serve thereafter, the appointee must be formally nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Section 3: Presidential responsibilities Clause 1: State of the