Trump’s Judicial Hero Would Have Hated His Recess Appointments Plan

President-elect Donald J. Trump has singled out one former member of the Supreme Court as his judicial north star: Justice Antonin Scalia, a giant of the conservative legal movement who died in 2016.

“Justice Scalia was a remarkable person and a brilliant Supreme Court justice,” Mr. Trump said during his first campaign. “His career was defined by his reverence for the Constitution.”

Mr. Trump vowed “to appoint judges very much in the mold of Justice Scalia.”

But Mr. Trump strayed from Justice Scalia’s understanding of the Constitution earlier this month when he proposed using recess appointments to sidestep the Senate’s constitutional role of vetting and approving his nominees. The idea would have alarmed Justice Scalia.

That is not speculation or inference. Ten years ago, Justice Scalia anticipated the current dispute in a blistering 15-minute statement delivered from the bench after a five-justice majority ruled that many recess appointments made during congressional sessions were proper.

Without recess appointments, Mr. Trump said this month, “we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner.”

That was scant reason to bypass the Senate, Justice Scalia said in 2014.

“Governing would be much simpler if the president could choose the people he wanted to fill certain offices without having to get a bunch of senators to agree,” he said. “But the point of the Constitution is not simply to make government run efficiently.”