You never know which ideas will be neglected and which ones will circulate widely. One recently posted piece of legal scholarship -- an unpublished working paper, no less -- seems to have sparked some real interest compared to the norm for such scholarly papers: a paper, mentioned earlier in this blog, arguing that the current practice of recess appointments may be unconstitutional. The author argues that the Recess Appointments Clause allows the White House to fill federal vacancies only when the vacancy arises during a recess (not vacancies that arose before a recess and happened to continue into a recess period), and only in intersession recesses -- not the shorter intrasession breaks. The working paper, posted on a website for law professors, has had (as of 1:55 PM today) 357 views of the abstract and 97 downloads of the full paper. These are pretty large numbers for this particular website, especially for a paper that was first posted just three days ago. Any federal appointment can have profound consequences for federal policy, but recess appointments -- which bypass Senate confirmation and thus occur outside democratic processes -- can be particularly controversial. Check out the paper for yourself: Michael B. Rappaport, "The Original Meaning of the Recess Appointments Clause," unpublished working paper (download the abstract or full paper).