The
United States presidential line of succession
defines who may become or act as
President of the United
States upon the incapacity, death, resignation, or removal from
office (by
impeachment and subsequent
conviction) of a sitting president or a
president-elect.
Current order
This is a list of the current presidential
line of succession, as specified by the
United States
Constitution and the
Presidential Succession Act of
1947 ( ) and subsequent amendments to include newly created
cabinet officers.
Notes
- Political parties
- {|border="0"
- People not eligible to serve: People who are not natural-born
citizen are constitutionally ineligible to the office of
President, as are persons who are not at least thirty-five years
old or have not resided in the United States for fourteen years.
This is specified in the Presidential Succession Act ( ).
- Acting officers may be
eligible
- In 2009 the Continuity of Government
Commission, a private nonpartisan
think tank, reported
Motivation for changes to the succession in 1945
Two months after succeeding
Franklin D.Roosevelt, President
Harry S.Trumanproposed that the Speaker of the House
and the President pro tempore of the Senate be granted priority in
the line of succession over the Cabinet so as to ensure the
President would not be able to appoint his successor to the
Presidency.
The Secretary of State is appointed by the President, whereas the
Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate
are elected officials. The Speaker is chosen by the
U.S.House of
Representativesand every Speaker has been a member of that body
for the duration of their term as Speaker; the President pro
tempore is chosen by the
U.S.Senateand by custom the Senator of the
majority party with the longest record of continuous service fills
this position. The
Congressapproved this change and
inserted the Speaker and the President pro tempore in line, ahead
of the members of the Cabinet in the order in which their positions
were established.
Some of Truman's critics said that his proposal was motivated by
his dislike of the president pro tempore
Kenneth McKellar. Further motivation may
have been provided by Truman's preference for House Speaker
Sam Rayburnto be next in the line of
succession, rather than Secretary of State
Edward R.Stettinius.
In his speech supporting the changes, Truman noted that the House
is more likely to be in political agreement with the President and
Vice President than the Senate. The succession of a Republican to a
Democratic Presidency would further complicate an already unstable
political situation. However, when the changes to the succession
were signed into law, they placed Republican House Speaker
Joseph W.Martinfirst in the line of succession after
the Vice President.
Constitutional foundation
The line of succession is mentioned in three places in the
Constitution: in
Article II, Section 1, in
Section 3
of the 20th Amendment, and in the
25th
Amendment.
- Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 makes the Vice President first in
the line of succession and allows the Congress to provide by law for cases
in which neither the President nor Vice President can serve. The
current such law governing succession is the Presidential Succession Act of
1947 ( ).
- Section 3 of the 20th Amendment provides that if the President-elect dies
before his term begins, the Vice President-elect becomes President
on Inauguration
Day and serves for the full term to which the President-elect
was elected. The section also provides that if, on Inauguration
Day, a president has not been chosen or the President-elect does
not qualify for the presidency, the Vice President-elect acts as
president until a president is chosen or the President-elect
qualifies. Finally, Section 3 allows the Congress to provide by law
for cases in which neither a President-elect nor a Vice
President-elect is eligible or available to serve.
- The 25th Amendment, ratified in 1967, clarified Article II,
Section 1: that the Vice President is the direct successor of the
President. He or she becomes President if the President dies,
resigns or is removed from office. The 25th also provides for the
situation where the President is temporarily disabled, such as if
the President has a surgical procedure or becomes mentally
unstable. It also required vice presidential vacancies to be filled
by the President and confirmed by Congress. Previously, when a vice
president had succeeded to the presidency or otherwise left the
office empty (through death, resignation, or removal from office),
the vice presidency remained vacant.
Acting President and President
Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution provides
that:
- In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his
death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties
of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President …
until the disability be removed, or a President elected.
This originally left open the question whether "the same" refers to
"the said office" or only "the powers and duties of the said
office". Some historians argue that the framers' intention was that
the Vice President would remain Vice President while executing the
powers and duties of the presidency; however, there is also much
evidence to the contrary, the most compelling of which is Article
I, section 3, of the Constitution itself, the relevant text of
which reads:
- The Vice President of the United States shall be President of
the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally
divided.
- The Senate shall choose their other officers, and also a
President pro tempore, in the absence of the Vice President, or
when he shall exercise the office of
President of the United States.
This text appears to answer the hypothetical question of whether
the
officeor merely the
powersof the presidency
devolved upon the Vice President on his succession. Thus, the 25th
Amendment merely restates and reaffirms the validity of existing
precedent, apart from adding valuable new protocols for
presidential disability. But, of course, not everyone agreed with
this interpretation when it was first put to the test, and it was
left to John Tyler, the first presidential successor in U.S.
history, to establish the precedent that was respected in the
absence of the 25th Amendment.
Upon the death of President
William Henry Harrisonin 1841, after
a brief hesitation, Vice President
John
Tylertook the position that he was President, and not merely
acting
President, upon taking the
presidential
oath of office. He even returned mail sent to the "Acting
President of the United States".
This precedent was followed thereafter, and was clarified by
Section 1 of the
25th
Amendmentwhich specifies that: "In case of the removal of the
President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice
President shall become President." The Amendment does not specify
whether officers other than the Vice President can become President
rather than Acting President in the same set of circumstances.
However, the Presidential Succession Act makes clear that anyone
who takes office under its provisions shall only "act as
President"—even if they "act" in that role for years. Thus only
someone serving as Vice President can ever succeed to the title of
"President of the United States."
History of succession law set by Congress
The
Presidential Succession Act of 1792was the first succession law
passed by Congress. The act was contentious because of conflict
between the
Federalistsand
Democratic-Republicans. The
Federalists did not want the Secretary of State to appear next on
the list after the Vice President because
Thomas Jeffersonwas then Secretary of State
and had emerged as a Democratic-Republican leader. There were also
concerns about including the
Chief Justice of the United
Statessince that would go against the separation of powers. The
compromise that was worked out established the President pro
tempore of the Senate as next in line of succession after the Vice
President, followed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
In either case, these officers were to "act as President of the
United States until the disability be removed or a president be
elected." The Act called for a special election to be held in
November of the year in which dual vacancies occurred (unless the
vacancies occurred after the first Wednesday in October, in which
case the election would occur the following year; or unless the
vacancies occurred within the last year of the presidential term,
in which case the next election would take place as regularly
scheduled). The people elected President and Vice President in such
a special election would have served a full four-year term
beginning on March 4 of the next year, but no such election ever
took place.
In 1881, after the death of
President
Garfield, and in 1885, after the death of Vice President
Hendricks, there had been no
President pro tempore in office, and as the new House of
Representatives had yet to convene, no Speaker either, leaving no
one at all in the line of succession after the vice
president.
When Congress convened in December 1885,
President Clevelandasked for a revision of
the 1792 act.
This was passed in 1886. Congress replaced the President pro
tempore and Speaker with officers of the President's
Cabinetwith the Secretary of State
first in line. In the first 100 years of the United States, six
former
Secretaries of
Statehad gone on to be elected President, while only two
Congressional leaders had advanced to that office. As a result,
shuffling the order of the line of succession seemed
reasonable.
The
Presidential Succession Act of 1947, signed into law by
President
Harry S.Truman, added the Speaker of the House and
President pro tempore back in the line, but switched the two from
the 1792 order. It remains the sequence used .
Since the
reorganization of the military in 1947 had merged the War
Department (which governed the Army) with the Department of the
Navy into the Department of Defense
, the Secretary of Defense took the place in the
order of succession previously held by the Secretary of
War.The office of
Secretary of the Navy,
which had existed as a Cabinet-level position since 1798, had
become subordinate to the Secretary of Defense in the military
reorganization, and so was dropped from the line of succession in
the 1947 Succession Act.
Until 1971, the
Postmaster Generalwas the
head of the
Post
Office Department. During most of that period, he was a member
of the
President'sCabinetand the postmaster was last in
the presidential line of succession. Once the Post Office
Department was re-organized into the
United States Postal Service, a
special agency independent of the executive branch, the Postmaster
General ceased to be a member of the Cabinet and was thus removed
from the line of succession.
The order of Cabinet members set out in the statute has always been
the same as the order in which their respective departments were
established.
However, when the United States Department of Homeland
Security
was created in 2002, many in Congress wanted the
Secretary to be placed at number eight on the list – below the
Attorney General, above the Secretary of the Interior, and in the
position held by the Secretary of the Navy prior to the creation of
the Secretary of Defense – because the Secretary, already in charge
of disaster relief and security, would presumably be more prepared
to take over the presidency than some of the other Cabinet
secretaries.Legislation to add the Secretary of Homeland
Security to the bottom of the list was enacted on March 9,
2006.
Successions beyond Vice President
While nine vice presidents have succeeded to the office upon the
death or resignation of the President, and two vice presidents have
temporarily served as acting President, no other officer has ever
been called upon to act as President.
On March 4, 1849,
James K.Polk's presidency ended on a Sunday.
President-elect
Zachary
Taylordeclined to be sworn in on a Sunday, citing religious
beliefs. Senate President pro tempore
David Rice Atchison's tombstone states
that he was President for the day. However, given that the last day
of Atchison's own term as Senate President pro tempore was March 3,
that claim seems dubious. Indeed, since Atchinson took no oath of
office to the presidency, it is not logical to label Atchinson as a
president on the basis of Taylor merely not taking the oath.
In 1865, when
Andrew Johnsonassumed
the presidency on the death of
Abraham
Lincoln, the office of Vice President became vacant. At that
time, the Senate President pro tempore was next in line to the
presidency. In 1868 Johnson was
impeached, and if he had been
removed from office, President pro tempore
Benjamin Wadewould have become acting
President. This posed a conflict of interest, as Wade's own vote on
removal could have helped to determine whether he would succeed to
the presidency.
During the
1973
vice-presidential vacancy,
House
Speaker Carl Albert was
first in line. As the
Watergate
scandal made President Nixon's removal or resignation
possible, Albert would have become
Acting
President and—under Title 3, Section 19(c) of the
U.S.Code—would have been able to "act as
President until the expiration of the then current Presidential
term." Albert openly questioned whether it was appropriate for him,
a
Democrat, to
assume the powers and duties of the presidency when there was a
public
mandate for the
presidency to be held by a
Republican. Albert
announced that should he need to assume the presidential powers and
duties, he would do so only as a
caretaker. However, with the nomination
and confirmation of
Gerald Fordto the
vice presidency, these series of events were never tested. Albert
again became first-in-line during the first four months of Ford's
presidency, before the confirmation of Vice President
Nelson Rockefeller.
In 1981,
when President
Ronald Reagan was shot
, Vice President George
H.W.Bushwas traveling in Texas.
Secretary of StateAlexander Haigresponded to a reporter's
question regarding who was running the government by stating;
A bitter dispute ensued over the meaning of Haig's remarks. Some
people believed that Haig was referring to the line of succession
and erroneously claimed to have temporary presidential authority,
due to his reference to the Constitution. Haig and his supporters,
noting his familiarity with the line of succession from his time as
White House Chief of
Staffduring
Richard Nixon's
resignation, said he only meant that he was the highest ranking
officer of the Executive branch on-site, managing things
temporarily until the Vice President returned to Washington.
Constitutional concerns
Several constitutional law experts have raised questions as to the
constitutionality of the provisions that the Speaker of the House
and the President pro tempore of the Senate succeed to the
presidency.
James Madison, one of the
authors of the Constitution, raised similar constitutional
questions about the
Presidential Succession Act of 1792in a 1792 letter to
Edmund Pendleton. Two of these issues can
be summarized:
- The term "Officer" in the relevant clause of the Constitution
is most plausibly interpreted to mean an "Officer of the United
States", who must be a member of the Executive or Judicial Branch.
The Speaker and the President pro tempore are not officers in this
sense.
- Under the principle of separation of powers, the Constitution
specifically disallows legislative officials from also serving in
the executive branch. For the Speaker or the President pro tempore
to become Acting President, they must resign their position, at
which point they are no longer in the line of succession. This
forms a constitutional paradox to some.
In 2003 the
Continuity of Government
Commissionsuggested that the current law has "at least seven
significant issues … that warrant attention", including:
- The
reality that all figures in the current line of succession work and
reside in the vicinity of Washington, D.C.
In the event of a nuclear, chemical, or
biological attack, it is possible that everyone on the list would
be killed or incapacitated.
- Doubt (such as those expressed above by James Madison) that
Congressional leaders are eligible to act as President.
- A concern about the wisdom of including the President pro
tempore in the line of succession as the "largely honorific post
traditionally held by the longest-serving Senator of the majority
party". For example, from January 20, 2001, to June
6, 2001, the President pro tempore was then-98-year-old Strom Thurmond of South Carolina
.
- A concern that the current line of succession can force the
presidency to abruptly switch parties mid-term, as the Speaker and
the President pro tempore are not necessarily of the same party as
the President.
- A concern that the succession line is ordered by the dates of
creation of the various executive departments, without regard to
the skills or capacities of the persons serving as their
Secretary.
- The fact that, should a Cabinet member begin to act as
President, the law allows the House to elect a new
Speaker (or the Senate, a new
President pro tempore), who could in effect remove the Cabinet
member and assume the office themselves at any time.
- The absence of a provision where a President is disabled and
the vice presidency is vacant (for example, if an assassination
attempt simultaneously wounded the President and killed the Vice
President).
See also
External link
References
Specific references:
- Senate.gov
- Gates is not registered with any political party, but considers
himself Republican.
- "Special Message to the Congress on the Succession
to the Presidency. June 19, 1945" by President Harry S. Truman;
from the American Presidency Project archives
- Kipnotes.com
- "Is the Presidential Succession Law
Constitutional?", Akhil Reed Amar, Stanford Law Review,
November 1995.
- uchicago.edu
- First Report p. 4,
continuityofgovernment.org
General references:
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