Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution addresses issues related to presidential succession and disability.
It clarifies that the vice president becomes president if the president dies, resigns, or is removed from office by impeachment. It also establishes the procedure for filling a vacancy in the office of the vice president.
The amendment provides for the temporary transfer of the president's powers and duties to the vice president, either on the president's initiative alone or on the initiative of the vice president, together with a majority of the president's cabinet. In either case, the vice president becomes the acting president until the president's powers and duties are restored.
The amendment was submitted to the states on July 6, 1965, by the 89th Congress, and was adopted on February 10, 1967, the day the requisite number of states ratified it.
Text and effect
Section 1: Presidential succession
Section 1 clarifies that in the enumerated situations the vice president becomes president, instead of merely assuming the powers and duties of the presidency as acting president. It operates automatically, without needing to be explicitly invoked.Section 2: Vice presidential vacancy
Section 2 provides a mechanism for filling a vacancy in the vice presidency. Before the Twenty-fifth Amendment, a vice-presidential vacancy continued until a new vice president took office at the start of the next presidential term; the vice presidency had become vacant several times due to death, resignation, or accession to the presidency, and these vacancies had often lasted several years.Section 3: President's declaration of inability
Section 3 allows the president to voluntarily transfer presidential authority to the vice president by declaring in writing his inability to discharge the presidency's powers and duties. The vice president then assumes those powers and duties as acting president. The vice president does not become president; the president remains in office, though without authority. The president regains those powers and duties upon declaring in writing his ability to discharge them.Section 4: Declaration by vice president and cabinet members of president's inability
Section 4 addresses the case of a president who cannot discharge the powers and duties of the presidency but also cannot, or does not, execute the voluntary declaration contemplated by Section3. It allows the vice president, together with a "majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide", to issue a written declaration that the president is unable to discharge his duties. When such a declaration is sent to Congress, the vice president immediately becomes acting president, while the president remains in office, temporarily divested of authority.John Feerick, the principal draftsman of the amendment, writes that Congress deliberately left the terms unable and inability undefined "since cases of inability could take various forms not neatly fitting into definition... The debates surrounding the Twenty-fifth Amendment indicate that are intended to cover all cases in which some condition or circumstance prevents the President from discharging his powers and duties". A survey of scholarship on the amendment found
Among potential examples of such unforeseen emergencies, legal scholars have listed kidnapping of the president and "political emergencies" such as impeachment. Traits such as unpopularity, incompetence, impeachable conduct, poor judgment, or laziness might not in themselves constitute inability, but should such traits "rise to a level where they prevented the President from carrying out his or her constitutional duties, they still might constitute an inability, even in the absence of a formal medical diagnosis." In addition, a president who already manifested disabling traits at the time he was elected is not thereby immunized from a declaration of inability.
The "principal officers of the executive department" are the 15 Cabinet members enumerated in the United States Code at :
- Secretary of State
- Secretary of the Treasury
- Secretary of Defense
- Attorney General
- Secretary of the Interior
- Secretary of Agriculture
- Secretary of Commerce
- Secretary of Labor
- Secretary of Health and Human Services
- Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
- Secretary of Transportation
- Secretary of Energy
- Secretary of Education
- Secretary of Veterans Affairs
- Secretary of Homeland Security
If the president subsequently issues a declaration claiming to be able, then a four-day period begins during which the vice president remains acting president. If, by the end of this period, the vice president and a majority of the "principal officers" have not issued a second declaration of the president's inability, the president resumes his powers and duties; but if they do issue a second declaration within the four days, then the vice president remains acting president while Congress considers the matter. Then, if within 21 days the Senate and the House determine, each by a two-thirds vote, that the president is unable, the vice president continues as acting president; otherwise the president resumes his powers and duties.
Section 4's requirement of a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate is stricter than the Constitution's requirement for impeachment and removal of the president for "high crimes and misdemeanors"—a majority of the House followed by two-thirds of the Senate. In addition, an impeached president retains his authority unless and until the Senate votes to remove him or her at the end of an impeachment trial; in contrast, should Congress be called upon to decide the question of the president's ability or inability under Section4, presidential authority remains in the hands of the vice president unless and until the question is resolved in the president's favor.
Historical background
of the Constitution reads:This provision is ambiguous as to whether, under the enumerated circumstances, the vice president becomes president or merely assumes the "powers and duties" of the presidency. It also fails to define inability or to say how questions about inability are to be resolved. The Twenty-fifth Amendment addresses these deficiencies. The ambiguities in ArticleII, Section1, Clause6 of the Constitution regarding death, resignation, removal, or disability of the president created difficulties several times:
File:Tyler Daguerreotype.jpg|thumb|upright=0.65|Upon the death of William Henry Harrison, John Tyler became the first incumbent vice president to succeed to the presidency.
- In 1841, William Henry Harrison died in office. It had previously been suggested that the vice president would become acting president upon the president's death, but Vice President John Tyler asserted that he had succeeded to the presidency, instead of merely assuming its powers and duties; he also declined to acknowledge documents referring to him as "acting president". Although Tyler felt his vice presidential oath obviated any need for the presidential oath, he was persuaded that being formally sworn in would resolve any doubts. Accordingly, he took the oath and title of "President", without any qualifiers, moved into the White House, and assumed full presidential powers. Though Tyler was sometimes derided as "His Accidency", both houses of Congress adopted a resolution confirming that he was president. The Tyler Precedent of succession was thus established, and subsequently Vice Presidents Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry S. Truman, and Lyndon B. Johnson were all deemed to have become president on the death of incumbent presidents. Section 1 codified this precedent.
- In 1893, Grover Cleveland secretly had cancer surgery, after which he was incapacitated for a time and kept from public view.
- Following Woodrow Wilson's stroke in 1919, no one officially assumed his powers and duties, in part because his wife, Edith Wilson, and the White House physician, Cary T. Grayson, kept his condition secret. By the time Wilson's condition became public knowledge, only a few months remained in his term and Congressional leaders were disinclined to press the issue.
- Up to 1967, the office of vice president had become vacant 16 times when the vice president died, resigned, or succeeded to the presidency. The vacancy created when Andrew Johnson succeeded to the presidency upon Abraham Lincoln's assassination was one of several that encompassed nearly an entire four-year term. In 1868, Johnson was impeached by the House of Representatives and came one vote short of being removed from office by the Senate in his impeachment trial. Had Johnson been removed, President pro tempore Benjamin Wade would have become acting president in accordance with the Presidential Succession Act of 1792.
- After several periods of incapacity due to severe health problems, President Dwight D. Eisenhower attempted to clarify procedures through a signed agreement with Vice President Richard Nixon, drafted by Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr., but this agreement had no legal authority. Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in September 1955 and intestinal problems requiring emergency surgery in July 1956. Each time, until Eisenhower was able to resume his duties, Nixon presided over Cabinet meetings and, along with Eisenhower aides, kept the executive branch functioning and assured the public the situation was under control. But Nixon refused to use the president's White House office or sit in the president's chair at Cabinet meetings.