Legislation to establish such a line of succession was introduced in December 1790 in the United States House of Representatives, in the 1st Congress.

Naming the secretary of state was unacceptable to most Federalists, as they did not want the office's then-occupant, Thomas Jefferson, the leader of the growing anti-administration opposition that would become the Democratic-Republican Party, placed so close to the presidency.

Constitutional and policy objections were raised to naming the president pro tempore of the Senate or the speaker of the House, as it was assumed the individual would retain their office and seat in Congress while temporarily performing duties of the presidency;[4] similar separation of powers concerns were also raised regarding the chief justice.

As a result, after a contentious debate, on February 15, 1792, the House struck out the president pro tempore and speaker and inserted the secretary of state in their place.

Hendricks' death in November 1885, just eight months into his term, once again left no direct successor, which forced Congress to address the inadequacies of the 1792 Succession Act.

[19] A bill to transfer the succession from congressional officers to members of the Cabinet was introduced in the Senate by George Hoar in 1882.

Had they been elected, Willkie's death would have resulted in the secretary of state becoming acting president for the remainder of the term ending on January 20, 1945.

[22][23] In June 1945, two months after becoming president upon Franklin D. Roosevelt's death, Harry S. Truman sent a message to Congress urging the revision of the Presidential Succession Act of 1886.

He recommended that the speaker of the House and president pro tempore of the Senate be restored to, and given priority in, the presidential line of succession over members of the Cabinet.

[7][9][26] A bill incorporating the president's proposal was introduced in the House on June 25, 1945, by Hatton W. Sumners and approved—minus the special election provision—four days later by a wide margin.

In 1970 and 1977, respectively, the postmaster general was removed as a result of the Postal Reorganization Act, and the secretary of energy was inserted at the end of the list.

[3] Companion bills to include the secretary of homeland security (SHS) in the line of succession were introduced in the 108th Congress (in 2003) and again in the 109th (in 2005) by Senator Mike DeWine and Representative Tom Davis.

Proponents of placing the SHS high in the order of succession (eighth overall, as opposed to seventeenth) argued that, given the department's many responsibilities in the areas of security and national preparedness, the officer responsible for disaster relief and security could be expected to possess the relevant knowledge and expertise to capably function as acting president following a catastrophic event; the same could not be said of every cabinet secretary.

[28] The matter remained unresolved until March 2006, when the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act added the secretary of homeland security to the presidential line of succession, at the end.

[34] Recourse in this case to the 1947 Act was not necessary, because Section 2 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, ratified only six years earlier, established a mechanism for filling an intra-term vice presidential vacancy, and House Minority Leader Ford was appointed.

[36] Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and several other congressional leaders went;[37] President pro tempore of the Senate Robert Byrd did not, choosing instead to be taken to his Capitol Hill home.

Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta went into an underground bunker at the White House; a few Cabinet members were out of the country that day.

For example, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue was the Cabinet member so designated when President Donald Trump delivered his 2018 State of the Union Address.

[41] Akhil Amar, who is a legal scholar in constitutional law, has called it "a disastrous statute, an accident waiting to happen".

During a September 2003 joint hearing before the U.S. Senate's Committee on Rules and Administration and Committee on the Judiciary, M. Miller Baker said: The 1947 Act is probably unconstitutional because it appears that the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate are not "Officers" eligible to act as President within the meaning of the Succession Clause.

This contextual reading is confirmed by Madison's notes from the Constitutional Convention, which reveal that the Convention's Committee of Style, which had no authority to make substantive changes, substituted "Officer" in the Succession Clause in place of "Officer of the United States", probably because the Committee considered the full phrase redundant.

[44] In its 2009 report, the Continuity of Government Commission argued that as well as going against the language of the Constitution, bumping violates the doctrine of separation of powers by undermining the independence of the executive from the Congress: The Constitution on its face seems to stipulate that once a person is deemed to be acting president by the Presidential Succession Act, he or she cannot be replaced by a different person.

This interpretation makes some logical sense as the provision would presumably prevent the confusion that would arise if the presidency were transferred to several different individuals in a short period of time.

It would also seemingly prevent Congress from exercising influence on the executive branch by threatening to replace a cabinet member acting as president with a newly elected Speaker of the House.

[29]On a practical level, it has been argued that this provision could result in there being multiple acting presidents in a short period of time during a national crisis and weaken the public legitimacy of successors.

[30][44] In a January 2011 Roll Call op-ed, Representative Brad Sherman wrote, [The bumping provision] creates a game of musical chairs with the presidency and would cause great instability.