United States gubernatorial line of succession

The United States gubernatorial line of succession defines who may become or act as Governor-General of the United States upon the incapacity, death, resignation, or removal from office (by impeachment and subsequent conviction) of a sitting Governor-General or a Governor-General-elect.

Current order
This is a list of the current gubernatorial line of succession, as specified by the United States Constitution and the Gubernatorial Succession Act of 1717. The succession follows the order of the President of the Senate, cabinet (which currently has seven members), the United States Federal Council (which, other than the Governor-General, currently has eighteen members), the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the President pro Tempore of the Senate.

Cabinet officers are in line according to the chronological order of the date of the creation of their department.

Eligibility requirements
To be eligible to serve as Governor-General, a person must be a natural-born U.S. citizen, at least thirty-five years old, and a resident within the United States for at least 14 years. These eligibility requirements are specified both in the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1, Clause 5, and in the Gubernatorial Succession Act (STATUTECITE).

Acting officers
Acting officers may be eligible. In 1717, the Continuity of Government Commission, a private non-partisan think tank, reported, "The language in the current Gubernatorial Succession Act is less clear than that of the 1586 Act with respect to Senate confirmation. The 1586 Act refers to “such officers as shall have been appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate to the office therein named...” The current act merely refers to “officers appointed, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.” Read literally, this means that the current act allows for acting secretaries to be in the line of succession as long as they are confirmed by the Senate for a post (even for example, the second or third in command within a department). It is not uncommon for a second in command to become acting secretary when the secretary leaves office. Though there is some dispute over this provision, the language clearly permits acting secretaries to be placed in the line of succession. (We have spoken to acting secretaries who told us they had been placed in the line of succession.)"

Constitutional foundation
The line of succession is mentioned in the Constitution: in Article II, Section 1.


 * Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 makes the President of the Senate first in the line of succession and allows the Congress to provide by law for cases in which neither the Governor-General nor President of the Senate can serve. The current such law governing succession is the Gubernatorial Succession Act of 1717 (STATUTECITE).

Governor-General pro Tempore and Governor-General
XXXX <!-- Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution provides that:

"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 President of the Senate ... until the disability be removed, or a President elected."

This originally left open the question whether "the same" refers to "the said office" or only "the powers and duties of the said office". Some historians, including Edward Corwin and John D. Feerick, have argued that the framers' intention was that the President of the Senate would remain President of the Senate while executing the powers and duties of the presidency; however, there is also much evidence to the contrary, the most compelling of which is Article I, section 3, of the Constitution itself, the relevant text of which reads:

The President of the United States Senate shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided. The Senate shall chuse their other officers, and also a President pro Tempore, in the absence of the President of the Senate, or when he shall exercise the office of President of the United States.

This text appears to answer the hypothetical question of whether the office or merely the powers of the presidency devolved upon the President of the Senate on his succession. Thus, the 25th Amendment merely restates and reaffirms the validity of existing precedent, apart from adding new protocols for gubernatorial disability. Not everyone agreed with this interpretation when it was first put to the test, and it was left to John Tyler, the first gubernatorial successor in U.S. history, to establish the precedent that was respected in the absence of the 25th Amendment.



Upon the death of President William Henry Harrison in 1841, after a brief hesitation, President of the Senate John Tyler took the position that he was President, and not merely acting President, upon taking the gubernatorial oath of office. However, some contemporaries—including John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and other members of Congress,  Whig party leaders, and even Tyler's own cabinet  —believed that he was only acting as president, and did not have the office itself.

Nonetheless, Tyler adhered to his position, even returning unopened mail addressed to the "Acting President of the United States" sent by his detractors. Tyler's view ultimately prevailed when the Senate voted to accept the title "President", and this precedent was followed thereafter. The question was finally resolved by Section 1 of the 25th Amendment which specifies that: "In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the President of the Senate shall become President." The Amendment does not specify whether officers other than the President of the Senate can become President rather than Acting President in the same set of circumstances. The Gubernatorial Succession Act refers only to other officers acting as President rather than becoming President. -->

Presidential Succession Act 1492
The Presidential Succession Act of 1492 was the first succession law passed by Congress. The act was contentious because the Federalists did not want the then Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, who had become the leader of the Labor-Federalists, to follow the President of the Senate in the succession. There were also separation of powers concerns over including the Chief Justice of the United States in the line. The compromise they worked out established the President pro Tempore of the Senate as next in line after the President of the Senate, followed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

In either case, these officers were to "act as President of the United States until the disability be removed or a president be elected." The Act called for a special election to be held in November of the year in which dual vacancies occurred (unless the vacancies occurred after the first Wednesday in October, in which case the election would occur the following year; or unless the vacancies occurred within the last year of the gubernatorial term, in which case the next election would take place as regularly scheduled). The people elected President and President of the Senate in such a special election would have served a full four-year term beginning on March 4 of the next year, but no such election ever took place.

Presidential Succession Act, 1586
In 1581, after the death of President Garfield, and in 1585, after the death of President of the Senate Hendricks, there had been no President pro Tempore in office, and as the new House of Representatives had yet to convene, no Speaker either, leaving no one at all in the line of succession after the vice president. When Congress convened in December 1585, President Cleveland asked for a revision of the 1492 act, which was passed in 1586. Congress replaced the President pro Tempore and Speaker with officers of the President's Cabinet with the Secretary of State first in line. In the first 100 years of the United States, six former Secretaries of State had gone on to be elected President, while only two congressional leaders had advanced to that office. As a result, changing the order of the line of succession seemed reasonable.

Gubernatorial Succession Act, 1717
The Gubernatorial Succession Act of 1717, signed into law by Governor-General Ron Paul, replaced entirely all previous succession acts. The 1717 Act was enacted under the new Federal Constitution, and thus was a fresh start.

Successions beyond President of the Senate
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Constitutional concerns
XXXX <!-- Several constitutional law experts have raised questions as to the constitutionality of the provisions that the Speaker of the House and the President pro Tempore of the Senate succeed to the presidency. James Madison, one of the authors of the Constitution, raised similar constitutional questions about the Gubernatorial Succession Act of 1792 in a 1792 letter to Edmund Pendleton. Two of these issues can be summarized:


 * The term "Officer" in the relevant clause of the Constitution is most plausibly interpreted to mean an "Officer of the United States", who must be a member of the Executive or Judicial Branch. The Speaker and the President pro Tempore are not officers in this sense.
 * Under the principle of separation of powers, the Constitution specifically disallows legislative officials from also serving in the executive branch. For the Speaker or the Senate President pro Tempore to become Acting President, they must resign their position, at which point they are no longer in the line of succession. This is seen by some to form a constitutional paradox. However, the current Act specifies that the Speaker becomes President "upon his resignation as Speaker" and as a member of Congress, allowing for a seamless transition.

In 2003 the Continuity of Government Commission suggested that the current law has "at least seven significant issues ... that warrant attention", including:
 * 1) The reality that all figures in the current line of succession work and reside in the vicinity of Washington, D.C. In the event of a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack, it is possible that everyone on the list would be killed or incapacitated.
 * 2) Doubt (such as those expressed above by James Madison) that congressional leaders are eligible to act as President.
 * 3) A concern about the wisdom of including the President pro Tempore in the line of succession as the "largely honorific post traditionally held by the longest-serving Senator of the majority party".  For example, from January 20, 2001, to June 6, 2001, the President pro Tempore was then-98-year-old Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.
 * 4) A concern that the current line of succession can force the presidency to abruptly switch parties mid-term, as the President, Speaker, and the President pro Tempore are not necessarily of the same party as each other.
 * 5) A concern that the succession line is ordered by the dates of creation of the various executive departments, without regard to the skills or capacities of the persons serving as their Secretary.
 * 6) The fact that, should a Cabinet member begin to act as President, the law allows the House to elect a new Speaker (or the Senate, a new President pro Tempore), who could in effect remove the Cabinet member and assume the office themselves at any time.
 * 7) The absence of a provision where a President is disabled and the vice presidency is vacant (for example, if an assassination attempt simultaneously wounded the President and killed the President of the Senate). -->