1897年2月，哥伦比亚特区的所有刑事起诉停摆。审判被推迟。无法缴纳保释金的新被捕者面临无限期羁押。在另一州落网的通缉犯无法被引渡。长达22天，美国首都不存在任何起诉权力。造成这种混乱的原因？在于缺少一名美国地方检察官（即今日美国检察官的前身）。1897年2月6日，现任者亚瑟·A·伯尼的任期届满。
In February 1897, all criminal prosecutions in the District of Columbia stopped. Trials were postponed. New arrestees unable to post bond faced indefinite detention. A wanted fugitive captured in another state could not be extradited. For 22 days, no prosecutorial authority existed in the nation’s capital. The cause of this disruption? The absence of a U.S. district attorney (as today’s U.S. attorneys were then called). On Feb. 6, 1897, the term of the incumbent, Arthur A. Birney, expired.
几天前，即将卸任的总统格罗弗·克利夫兰提名当地律师协会会长亨利·E·戴维斯接任伯尼。然而，参议院拒绝对该提名采取行动。伯尼离任时，没有任何法规明确规定由谁来任命首都的临时地方检察官。在没有参议院确认的官员、也没有临时任命机制的情况下，人们认为起诉权力无处安放。僵局直到国会通过立法、授权当地联邦法院任命临时地方检察官才得以结束；克利夫兰总统勉强签署了该法案。
A few days before, the lame-duck president, Grover Cleveland, had nominated the head of the local bar association, Henry E. Davis, to succeed Birney. However, the Senate declined to act on the nomination. When Birney left office, no statute clearly provided for the appointment of an interim district attorney for the capital. Without a Senate-confirmed official or any mechanism for the appointment of an interim, it was understood that there was no place for the prosecutorial power to reside. The stalemate ended only after Congress passed legislation permitting the local federal court to appoint an interim district attorney; President Cleveland reluctantly signed the bill.
3月1日，克利夫兰卸任前几天，参议院否决了戴维斯的提名，当地法院的法官们随即任命这位落选提名人担任临时职务——他随后一干就是两年半。这段早已被遗忘的插曲如今有了新的现实意义。目前，全国93个美国检察官办公室中有10个处于无人领导状态。违背联邦法规的明文规定，这些辖区既没有总统提名、参议院确认的美国检察官，也没有合法履职的临时或代理官员。国会规定，当美国检察官空缺持续足够长的时间，由地区法院任命临时检察官。
On March 1, days before Cleveland left office, the Senate voted down Davis’s nomination, and the judges of the local court appointed the failed nominee to serve in an interim capacity — something he would do for the following two-and-a-half years. This now-forgotten episode has new relevance. Presently, 10 of the country’s 93 U.S. attorneys’ offices are leaderless. Contrary to the command of a federal statute, in these districts, there is no presidentially appointed and Senate confirmed U.S. attorney. Moreover, there is no lawfully serving interim or acting official. Congress provided that when U.S. attorney vacancies go on for long enough, it is up to the district court to appoint an interim prosecutor.
本届政府通过反复解聘法院指定的律师，规避了该条款（尽管总统这样做的权力在法律上充其量只是存疑）。这些办公室服务的人口总计约为4320万，意味着全美约12%的人口生活在缺乏首席联邦执法官员的辖区内。与1897年不同，这10个办公室并未关闭。相反，每个办公室均由一名第一助理美国检察官领导，尽管这种安排缺乏法定依据。
This administration has circumvented that provision by repeatedly firing the court-appointed attorneys (despite the president’s authority to do so being legally dubious, at best). These offices serve a combined population of roughly 43.2 million people, meaning about 12 percent of all Americans live in districts lacking a chief federal law enforcement officer. Unlike in 1897, the 10 offices have not closed. Instead, each office is being led by a first assistant U.S. attorney, despite there being no statutory basis for such an arrangement.
这通常是一位资深的职业政府律师。领导这10个有问题办公室的几位人选并不符合这一模式——其中7人是从政府外部引入的政治人物。政府利用这一漏洞，安插其挑选的人选领导这些美国检察官办公室，绕过了参议院确认这一制衡机制。在即将发表于《威克森林法律评论》的一篇文章中，我主张1897年的观点应当占上风：没有美国检察官，助理美国检察官就缺乏代表政府进行诉讼的权力。
This is usually a senior career government attorney. Several of those leading the 10 offices at issue do not fit this mold — seven are political actors brought in from outside of government. The administration has used this loophole to install its chosen picks to lead these U.S. attorneys’ offices, bypassing the check of Senate confirmation. In an upcoming article for the Wake Forest Law Review, I contend that the 1897 view should prevail: without a U.S. attorney, assistant U.S. attorneys lack the power to litigate on behalf of the government.
国会将起诉权赋予了司法部长和美国检察官；助理美国检察官必须从这两个来源之一获得其权力。如今的司法部持有一种观点，即大约6300名助理美国检察官的权力直接来自司法部长。这一立场使美国检察官变得多余——成了可以随意撤换而无后顾之忧的摆设。但这为何重要？因为准独立的美国检察官办公室这一长期传统——它们回应其所在社区的需求和价值观——正在被侵蚀。
Congress has vested prosecutorial power in the attorney general and the U.S. attorneys; assistant U.S. attorneys must derive their authority from one of those two sources. Today’s Justice Department takes the view that the powers of the roughly 6,300 assistant U.S. attorneys come directly from the attorney general. This position renders U.S. attorneys superfluous — figureheads who can be dispatched without consequence. But why does this matter? Because the long tradition of quasi-independent U.S. attorneys’ offices, responsive to the needs and values of their communities, is being eroded.
尽管受司法部长监督，但作为同为总统任命的官员，美国检察官长期以来被赋予了广泛的自由裁量权，可在政府政策参数范围内做出个别起诉决定。那些由助理美国检察官领导的办公室……律师完全受总检察长的约束。此安排使政治人物能够出于政治目的对办公室进行微观管理。遵循1897年采纳的形式主义观点当然会产生成本。
Although supervised by the attorney general, as fellow presidential appointees, U.S. attorneys have long been afforded wide latitude to make individual prosecutorial decisions (within the administration’s policy parameters). Those offices led by assistant U.S. attorneys are entirely beholden to the attorney general. This arrangement permits political actors to micromanage the offices for political purposes. There are costs to adhering to the formalistic view adopted in 1897, of course.
但鉴于司法部采取的明显政治行动，因干扰造成的危害真的比缺乏问责造成的危害更大吗？1897年，国会和总统只用了三周时间就采取行动。也许今天从这些无领导的助手手中撤走权力，能够促使提名和确认能够公平行使庞大联邦检控权的合格人士。Jonathan S. Ross 是南卡罗来纳大学约瑟夫·F·赖斯法学院的客座助理教授。他此前曾担任阿拉巴马州中部地区的代理和法院任命的临时美国检察官。
But given the overtly political actions taken by this Justice Department, do the harms caused by disruption really outweigh those caused by a lack of accountability? In 1897, it took only three weeks for Congress and the president to act. It could be that withdrawing power from these leaderless assistants today would spur the nomination and confirmation of qualified individuals who can be trusted to fairly exercise the vast federal prosecutorial power. Jonathan S. Ross is a visiting assistant professor of law at the University of South Carolina's Joseph F. Rice School of Law. He previously served as the acting and court-appointed interim United States Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama.