Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Twenty-fifth Amendment (Amendment XXV) to the United States Constitution addresses issues related to presidential succession and disability.

It clarifies that the vice president becomes president if the president dies, resigns, or is removed from office by impeachment. It also establishes the procedure for filling a vacancy in the office of the vice president.

The amendment provides for the temporary transfer of the president's powers and duties to the vice president, either on the president's initiative alone or on the initiative of the vice president, together with a majority of the president's cabinet. In either case, the vice president becomes the acting president until the president's powers and duties are restored.

The amendment was submitted to the states on July 6, 1965, by the 89th Congress, and was adopted on February 10, 1967, the day the requisite number of states (38) ratified it.

Text and effect

Section 1: Presidential succession

Section 1 clarifies that in the enumerated situations the vice president becomes president, instead of merely assuming the powers and duties of the presidency as acting president. It operates automatically, without needing to be explicitly invoked.

Section 2: Vice presidential vacancy

Section 2 provides a mechanism for filling a vacancy in the vice presidency. Before the Twenty-fifth Amendment, a vice-presidential vacancy continued until a new vice president took office at the start of the next presidential term; the vice presidency had become vacant several times due to death, resignation, or accession to the presidency, and these vacancies had often lasted several years.

Section 3: President's declaration of inability

Section 3 allows the president to voluntarily transfer presidential authority to the vice president (for example, in anticipation of a medical procedure) by declaring in writing his inability to discharge the presidency's powers and duties. The vice president then assumes those powers and duties as acting president. The vice president does not become president; the president remains in office, though without authority. The president regains those powers and duties upon declaring in writing his ability to discharge them.

Section 4: Declaration by vice president and cabinet members of president's inability

Section 4 addresses the case of a president who cannot discharge the powers and duties of the presidency but also cannot, or does not, execute the voluntary declaration contemplated by Section 3. It allows the vice president, together with a "majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide", to issue a written declaration that the president is unable to discharge his duties. When such a declaration is sent to Congress, the vice president immediately becomes acting president, while (as with Section 3) the president remains in office, temporarily divested of authority.

John Feerick, the principal draftsman of the amendment, writes that Congress deliberately left the terms unable and inability undefined "since cases of inability could take various forms not neatly fitting into [a rigid] definition [...] The debates surrounding the Twenty-fifth Amendment indicate that [those terms] are intended to cover all cases in which some condition or circumstance prevents the President from discharging his powers and duties".  A survey of scholarship on the amendment found

no specific threshold—medical or otherwise—for the "inability" contemplated in Section 4. The framers specifically rejected any definition of the term, prioritizing flexibility. Those implementing Section 4 should focus on whether—in an objective sense taking all of the circumstances into account—the President is "unable to discharge the powers and duties" of the office. The amendment does not require that any particular type or amount of evidence be submitted to determine that the President is unable to perform his duties. While the framers did imagine that medical evidence would be helpful to the determination of whether the President is unable, neither medical expertise nor diagnosis is required for a determination of inability [...] To be sure, foremost in [the minds of the framers] was a physical or mental impairment. But the text of Section 4 sets forth a flexible standard intentionally designed to apply to a wide variety of unforeseen emergencies.

Among potential examples of such unforeseen emergencies, legal scholars have listed kidnapping of the president and "political emergencies" such as impeachment. Traits such as unpopularity, incompetence, impeachable conduct, poor judgment, or laziness might not in themselves constitute inability, but should such traits "rise to a level where they prevented the President from carrying out his or her constitutional duties, they still might constitute an inability, even in the absence of a formal medical diagnosis." In addition, a president who already manifested disabling traits at the time he was elected is not thereby immunized from a declaration of inability.

The "principal officers of the executive department[s]" are the 15 Cabinet members enumerated in the United States Code at 5 U.S.C. § 101:

Acting secretaries can participate in issuing the declaration.

If the president subsequently issues a declaration claiming to be able, then a four-day period begins during which the vice president remains acting president. If, by the end of this period, the vice president and a majority of the "principal officers" have not issued a second declaration of the president's inability, the president resumes his powers and duties; but if they do issue a second declaration within those four days, then the vice president remains acting president while Congress considers the matter. Then, if within 21 days the Senate and the House determine, each by a two-thirds vote, that the president is unable, the vice president remains acting president; otherwise the president resumes his powers and duties.

Section 4's requirement of a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate is stricter than the Constitution's requirement for impeachment and removal of the president for "high crimes and misdemeanors"—a majority of the House followed by two-thirds of the Senate. In addition, an impeached president retains his authority unless and until the Senate votes to remove him or her at the end of an impeachment trial; in contrast, should Congress be called upon to decide the question of the president's ability or inability under Section 4, presidential authority remains in the hands of the vice president (as acting president) unless and until the question is resolved in the president's favor.

Historical background

Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 of the Constitution reads:

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

This provision is ambiguous as to whether, under the enumerated circumstances, the vice president becomes president (that is, the "Office [...] shall devolve on" the vice president) or merely assumes the "powers and duties" of the presidency (that is, the "Powers and Duties [...] shall devolve upon" the vice president). It also fails to define inability or to say how questions about inability are to be resolved. The Twenty-fifth Amendment addresses these deficiencies. The ambiguities in Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 of the Constitution regarding death, resignation, removal, or disability of the president created difficulties several times: