Twenty-fifth Amendment (1967)

Amendment to the United States Constitution concerning presidential disability and succession, [Page 309]which took effect in 1967. The amendment provided for continuity in carrying out the functions of the presidency in the event of presidential disability and for filling a vacancy in the vice presidency. The amendment was approved by the Senate and House in 1965 and took effect February 10, 1967, after ratification by thirty-eight states.

Congressional consideration of presidential disability had been prompted by President Dwight D. Eisenhower's (1953–1961) heart attack in 1955. The ambiguity of the language of the disability clause (Article II, Section 1, Clause 5) of the Constitution had caused debate ever since the Constitutional Convention of 1787. However, it never had been decided how far the term disability extended or who would be the judge of it.

Clause 5 provided that Congress should decide who was to succeed to the presidency if both the president and the vice president died, resigned, or became disabled. Congress enacted succession laws three times. By the Act of March 1, 1792, it provided for succession—after the vice president—of the president pro tempore of the Senate, then of the House Speaker; if those offices were vacant, states were to send electors to Washington to choose a new president.

That law stood until passage of the Presidential Succession Act of January 19, 1886, which changed the line of succession to run from the vice president to the secretary of state, secretary of the treasury, and so on through the cabinet in order of rank. Sixty-one years later the Presidential Succession Act of July 18, 1947, which is still in force, placed the Speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate ahead of cabinet officers in succession after the vice president.

Before ratification of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, no procedures were in place to cover presidential incapacity or of a vacancy in the office of vice president. Two presidents had had serious disabilities—James A. Garfield (1881), shot in 1881 and confined to his bed until he died two and a half months later, and Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921), who suffered a stroke in 1919. In each case, the vice president did not assume any duties of the presidency for fear he would appear to be taking over the powers of that office.

Ratification of the Twenty-fifth Amendment established procedures that clarified these areas of uncertainty in the Constitution. The amendment provided that the vice president should become acting president under either one of two circumstances: (1) if the president informed Congress of inability to perform duties, the vice president would become acting president until the president could resume normal responsibilities; (2) if the vice president and a majority of the cabinet, or another body designated by Congress, found the president to be incapacitated, the vice president would become acting president until the president informed Congress that the disability had ended. Congress was given twenty-one days to resolve any dispute over the president's disability; a two-thirds vote of both chambers was required to overrule the president's declaration of being no longer incapacitated.

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