United States presidential line of succession
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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.
Contents
1 Current order
2 Eligibility
2.1 Eligibility requirements
2.2 Acting officers
3 Motivation for changes to the succession in 1945
4 Constitutional foundation
5 Acting President and President
6 History of succession law set by Congress
6.1 Presidential Succession Act 1792
6.2 Presidential Succession Act 1886
6.3 Presidential Succession Act 1947
6.4 Postmaster General removed 1971
6.5 Secretary of Homeland Security added 2006
7 Successions beyond Vice President
8 Constitutional concerns
9 See also
10 References
11 Further reading
12 External links
Current order
This is a list of the current Presidential line of succession,[1] as specified by the United States Constitution and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947[2] as subsequently amended to include newly created cabinet offices. The succession follows the order of Vice President, Speaker of the House, President pro tempore of the Senate, and the cabinet, which currently has fifteen members, beginning with the Secretary of State.
No. / Office1 / Vice President
2 / Speaker of the House of Representatives
3 / President pro tempore of the Senate
4 / Secretary of State
5 / Secretary of the Treasury
6 / Secretary of Defense
7 / Attorney General
8 / Secretary of the Interior
9 / Secretary of Agriculture
10 / Secretary of Commerce
11 / Secretary of Labor
12 / Secretary of Health and Human Services
13 / Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
14 / Secretary of Transportation
15 / Secretary of Energy
16 / Secretary of Education
17 / Secretary of Veterans Affairs
18 / Secretary of Homeland Security
Cabinet officers are in line according to the chronological order of their department's creation, or the department of which their department is the successor (the Department of Defense being successor to the Department of War and the Department of Health and Human Services being successor to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare).[3]
Eligibility requirements
To be eligible to serve as President, a person must be a natural-born U.S. citizen, at least thirty-five years of age, and a resident within the United States for at least 14 years. These eligibility requirements are specified both in the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1, Clause 5, and in the Presidential Succession Act (3 U.S.C.§19(e)).
Acting officers
Acting officers may be eligible. In 2009, the Continuity of Government Commission, a private non-partisan think tank, reported,
The language in the current Presidential Succession Act is less clear than that of the 1886 Act with respect to Senate confirmation. The 1886 Act refers to "such officers as shall have been appointed by the advice and consent of the Senate to the office therein named..." The current act merely refers to "officers appointed, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate." Read literally, this means that the current act allows for acting secretaries to be in the line of succession as long as they are confirmed by the Senate for a post (even for example, the second or third in command within a department). It is common for a second in command to become acting secretary when the secretary leaves office. Though there is some dispute over this provision, the language clearly permits acting secretaries to be placed in the line of succession. (We have spoken to acting secretaries who told us they had been placed in the line of succession.)[4]
Motivation for changes to the succession in 1945
Two months after succeeding Franklin D. Roosevelt, President Harry S. Truman proposed 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.[5]
The Secretary of State and the other Cabinet officials are appointed by the President, while 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 Representatives, and 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. Senate and by custom the Senator of the majority party with the longest record of continuous service fills this position. The Congress approved 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.
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. Martin first in the line of succession after the Vice President.[6]
Some of Truman's critics said that his ordering of the Speaker before the President pro tempore was motivated by his dislike of the then-current holder of the latter rank, Senator Kenneth McKellar.[7] Further motivation may have been provided by Truman's preference for House Speaker Sam Rayburn to be next in the line of succession, rather than Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr.[6]
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 (3 U.S.C.§19).
· 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 amendment also provides for the situation where the President is temporarily disabled, such as if the President has a surgical procedure or becomes mentally unstable.
The amendment also provides for Vice Presidential succession, by requiring Vice Presidential vacancies to be filled by the President and confirmed by both houses of the Congress. Previously, whenever a Vice President had succeeded to the Presidency or had otherwise left the office empty (through death, resignation, or removal from office), the Vice Presidency remained vacant until the next Presidential and Vice Presidential terms began.
Acting President and President
Main article: Acting President of the United States
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, including Edward Corwin[8] and John D. Feerick,[8] have argued that the framers's 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 chuse [sic] 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 office or merely the powers of 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 new protocols for Presidential disability.[original research?] Not everyone agreed with this interpretation when it was first actually tested, and it was left to Vice President 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 Harrison in 1841, after a brief hesitation, Tyler took the position that he was the President, and not merely acting President, upon taking the presidential oath of office. However, some contemporaries--including John Quincy Adams,[8][9] Henry Clay[10] and other members of Congress,[9][10] Whig party leaders,[10] and even Tyler's own cabinet[9][10]--believed that he was only acting as President, and did not have the office itself.
Nonetheless, Tyler adhered to his position, even returning, unopened, mail addressed to the "Acting President of the United States" sent by his detractors.[11] Tyler's view ultimately prevailed when the Senate voted to accept the title "President,"[10] and this precedent was followed thereafter. The question was finally resolved by Section 1 of the 25th Amendment which 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. The Presidential Succession Act refers only to other officers acting as President rather than becoming President.
History of succession law set by Congress
Main article: Presidential Succession Act
Presidential Succession Act 1792The Presidential Succession Act of 1792 was the first succession law passed by Congress. The act was contentious because the Federalists did not want the then Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, who had become the leader of the Democratic-Republicans, to follow the Vice President in the succession. There were also separation of powers concerns over including the Chief Justice of the United States in the line. The compromise they worked out established the President pro tempore of the Senate as next in line 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.
Presidential Succession Act 1886In 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,[12] leaving no one at all in the line of succession after the vice president. When Congress convened in December 1885, President Cleveland asked for a revision of the 1792 act, which was passed in 1886. Congress replaced the President pro tempore and Speaker with officers of the President's Cabinet with the Secretary of State first in line. In the first 100 years of the United States, six former Secretaries of State had gone on to be elected President, while only two congressional leaders had advanced to that office. As a result, changing the order of the line of succession seemed reasonable.[citation needed]
Presidential Succession Act 1947The 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 today[update]. 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.