succession to the Presidency

If the President is removed from office because he has been impeached and convicted of a crime, or if he dies, resigns, or cannot discharge the powers and duties of the office, the Constitution (Article 2, Section 1) provides that “the same shall devolve on the Vice President,” who completes the remainder of his predecessor's term. There are no provisions for a special election. It is not clear from the text whether the words “the same” refer to the office of President or simply to the “powers and duties” of the office, which would make the Vice President, upon taking over, the “acting President.” William Henry Harrison died in 1841, becoming the first President to die in office. His Vice President, John Tyler, took the oath of office as President and refused to be considered acting President, thus settling the issue. The first clause of the 25th Amendment, adopted in 1967, confirms Tyler's position. It states clearly, “In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.”

If there are vacancies for both President and Vice President, the same section of the Constitution provides that Congress shall determine “what officer shall then act as President, and such officer shall act accordingly.” The language seems to indicate that the person assumes the powers of the office but is acting President. In 1792 Congress passed the first succession law, providing that the president pro tempore of the Senate would be next in line, then the Speaker of the House, until an interim election was held.

After the death of Vice President Thomas Hendricks in November 1885, Senator George F. Hoar (Republican-Massachusetts) pointed out the absence of both a Speaker of the House and a president pro tempore of the Senate during the long break between the Congress that ended its term on March 3 after an election and the next Congress that began on the first Monday in December, as specified by the Constitution (Article 1, Section 4). In 1886 Congress changed the order of succession, starting with cabinet officers in the order in which their departments had been created (the secretary of state would be first), and dropped any provision for an interim election.

But when Harry S. Truman became President following the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945, Truman thought it wrong to elevate nonelected officials to the Presidency. At Truman's urging, Congress changed the Act of Presidential Succession to put the Speaker of the House and president pro tempore of the Senate (both offices described in the Constitution) ahead of the cabinet members in the line of succession. The acting President would serve “until the expiration of the then current Presidential term,” an explicit rejection of the idea of an interim election.

In 1967, the ratification of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution further affected Presidential succession by allowing the President to appoint—with the advice and consent of Congress—someone to fill a vacancy in the Vice Presidency.

When the President delivers the annual State of the Union message, in the presence of the Vice President, Speaker, president pro tempore, the cabinet, and the Congress, one member of the cabinet always remains absent. This assures that one person in the line of succession will be able to assume the Presidency in case some tragedy befalls all the others.

See also Cabinet; Disability, Presidential; Health, Presidential; 25th Amendment; Vice President

Sources

• Ruth Silva, Presidential Succession (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1951).
• Allan Sindler, Unchosen Presidents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976)