The Vice-Presidency and the Problems of Presidential Succession and Inability

This Article examines three interrelated subjects: the Vice-Presidency, the presidential succession law, and the inability provision of the Constitution. The first section provides a brief history of the Vice-Presidency. Then, the Article examines the various laws over the nation’s history that have set out a line of succession to the presidency. The Article concludes with a discussion of proposals for solving the gaps and ambiguities in the Constitution’s presidential inability provision.

The author wrote this Article as he participated in the drafting of what would become the Constitution’s Twenty-Fifth Amendment.