Twentieth Amendment (1933)

Amendment written mainly to shorten the time between the election of the president, vice president, and members of Congress and their entry into office; also known as the “lame-duck” amendment. The gap for newly elected representatives and senators (unless the president called Congress into special session) had been thirteen months—from the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November (Election Day) until the first Monday in December of the following year. This date was established by Article I, Section 4, Clause 2, of the Constitution as the initial meeting day for Congress. The delay for presidents and vice presidents had been approximately four months, from Election Day until the following March 4. The source of this date for presidential inauguration was a decision by the Congress of the Articles of Confederation. After the Constitution was ratified, Congress had declared March 4, 1789, the date “for commencing proceedings under the said Constitution.” A law passed by the House and Senate in 1792 confirmed March 4 as the starting date for future presidential terms.

Senator George W. Norris, a Republican from Nebraska, was the main author of the Twentieth Amendment. Norris sought to remedy three major flaws he saw in the traditional arrangement, which he regarded as better suited to an age when travel was difficult and time-consuming and the business of the federal government was relatively minor. The first flaw was the biennial lame-duck session of Congress, which typically lasted from the December after the election until the following March and which included many outgoing members of the defeated party. Second, by not having Congress begin its term before the president, existing procedures empowered the lame-duck Congress, not the most recently elected one, to choose [Page 308]the president and vice president in the event of an electoral college deadlock. This had happened in 1801 and 1825. Finally, Norris regarded four months as too long a time for the nation to have, in effect, two presidents—an outgoing incumbent and an incoming president-elect.