Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution
[9] John Feerick, the principal draftsman of the amendment,[3]: xii,xx [4]: 5 [10] 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".
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.
But the text of Section 4 sets forth a flexible standard intentionally designed to apply to a wide variety of unforeseen emergencies.
In addition, a president who already manifested disabling traits at the time he was elected is not thereby immunized from a declaration of inability.
[4]: 21n63,22n67 The "principal officers of the executive department[s]" are the 15 Cabinet members enumerated in the United States Code at 5 U.S.C.
[2] 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: The 1951 novel The Caine Mutiny and its 1954 film version influenced the amendment's drafters.
John D. Feerick told The Washington Post in 2018 that the film was a "live depiction" of the type of crisis that could arise "if a president ever faced questions about physical or mental inabilities but disagreed completely with the judgment", a situation the Constitution did not address.
[25] In 1963, Senator Kenneth Keating of New York proposed a Constitutional amendment that would have enabled Congress to enact legislation providing for how to determine when a president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of the presidency, rather than, as the Twenty-fifth Amendment does, having the Constitution so provide.
[24] By the 1960s, medical advances had made it increasingly plausible that an injured or ill president might live a long time while incapacitated.
On February 23, 1967, at the White House ceremony certifying the ratification, Johnson said: It was 180 years ago, in the closing days of the Constitutional Convention, that the Founding Fathers debated the question of Presidential disability.
Now, at last, the 25th amendment clarifies the crucial clause that provides for succession to the Presidency and for filling a Vice Presidential vacancy.
[36] The office of vice president was thus again vacant, and on August 20 Ford nominated former New York governor Nelson Rockefeller.
[3]: 186–187 Feerick writes that the Twenty-fifth Amendment helped pave the way for Nixon's resignation during the Watergate scandal.
[3]: 158 On December 22, 1978, President Jimmy Carter considered invoking Section 3 in advance of hemorrhoid surgery.
[37] Since then, presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump also contemplated invoking Section 3 at various times without doing so.
[38] According to Stephanie Grisham, Trump underwent a colonoscopy without anesthesia in November 2019, likely to avoid having to invoke Section 3.
He elected to have the lesion removed immediately,[40] and consulted with White House counsel Fred Fielding about whether to invoke Section 3, and in particular about whether doing so would set an undesirable precedent.
On July 13, Reagan signed the letter mentioning that he was mindful of Section 3[41] before being placed under general anesthesia for a colectomy,[42] and Vice President George H. W. Bush was acting president from 11:28 a.m. until 7:22 pm, when Reagan transmitted a letter declaring himself able to resume his duties.
[43] In the Fordham Law Review, commentator John Feerick asserted that although Reagan disclaimed any use of the Twenty-fifth Amendment in his letter (likely out of "fear of the reaction of the country and the world to a 'President' who admitted to being disabled, and concern ... [over] set[ting] a harmful precedent"), he followed the process set forth in Section 3.
Bush awoke about forty minutes later, but refrained from resuming his presidential powers until 9:24 a.m. to ensure that no aftereffects remained.
[46] In the view of commentator Adam Gustafson, George W. Bush's unambiguous application of Section 3 "rectified" President Reagan's "ambivalent invocation" and provided an example of a "smooth and temporary transition" under Section 3 that paved the way for future applications.
[51] After the January 6 United States Capitol attack, President Donald Trump was accused of having incited the incident,[52][53][54] and by evening some of his Cabinet members were reportedly considering trying to get Vice President Mike Pence to agree to invoke Section 4.
