by Eric Wood
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The President doesn’t staff the federal government alone - the Constitution builds the Senate directly into most significant appointments, through a confirmation process that shapes federal courts, Cabinet agencies, and thousands of other positions.
Two tiers of appointment power
The Appointments Clause in Article II splits federal appointments into two tiers. “Principal officers” - Cabinet secretaries, federal judges, ambassadors, and other senior positions - require both presidential nomination and Senate confirmation by majority vote. “Inferior officers”, a much larger category covering many lower-level federal positions, can be filled without Senate confirmation if Congress has passed a law authorizing the President, a department head, or a court to make that appointment directly.
How Senate confirmation actually plays out
A nomination typically goes through committee hearings and a committee vote before reaching the full Senate floor for a final confirmation vote. Judicial nominations, especially for the Supreme Court, tend to draw the most public attention and the most contentious confirmation fights, since federal judges serve for life and can shape legal interpretation for decades well beyond the term of the President who appointed them.
Worth knowing
The Senate changed its own rules in recent years to eliminate the filibuster for most nominations - first for lower federal court and executive branch nominees in 2013, then extended to Supreme Court nominations in 2017. Before those changes, most significant nominations effectively needed 60 votes to overcome a filibuster and reach a final vote; today, most require only a simple majority.
Why it still matters
Which party controls the Senate has enormous practical consequences for how a President can staff the executive branch and federal judiciary, independent of who actually holds the presidency - a President facing an opposition-controlled Senate often sees far more nominations stall or fail than one whose own party holds a Senate majority, which is part of why Senate control matters as much in practice as presidential control does for shaping the federal government’s actual staffing.
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