During a panel, Dr. Snook, Dr. Kersey and Dr. Pieper discuss the myths, realities and unknowns of the 25th Amendment.
On Sept. 16, the School of Government and International Affairs presented a conversation about the myths, realities and unknowns of the 25th Amendment. The speakers were Dr. Carl Snook, Dr. Timothy Kersey and Dr. Andrew Pieper.
The 25th amendment has garnered much public attention during the tenures of both former President Trump and President Biden. Conversations focused on what it meant for a president to be “incapacitated,” with Trump, after Jan. 6, and with Biden, after the June 2024 Presidential debate.
The assassination of JFK was the catalyst for the 1967 ratification of the amendment, but up until 1967 for “20% of American history, We didn’t have a vice president.” said Dr. Pieper. “We had presidents die and their vice president would become president, and they would have no vice president.”
The 25th Amendment has four sections, each tackling a different question about the succession of power.
Section one states that if the president is no longer capable of serving, the vice president will take over.
Section two establishes that if there is a vacancy in the office of the vice president, the president will nominate someone who then must be voted into office by a majority vote of both houses of Congress.
Section three acts as a mechanism to let the vice president take over presidential duties if the president declares himself unable to continue.
Section four, which gained attention during the Trump administration, says that if the president is unwilling or unable to declare a disability, the vice president and a majority of the president’s cabinet can declare the president unable to lead.
According to Dr. Pieper, during the Trump presidency, cabinet members considered invoking the fourth section. “There were petitions taken and they fell two signatures short.” said Dr. Pieper.
Because of its ambiguity, there is little evidence of this happening. “There’s no procedure.” Dr. Snook explains, “Would the Vice President just go from person to person collecting it?”
This pattern of questioning the actual implementation of the 25th amendment was brought into all aspects of this conversation. From the question of which cabinet members are supposed to actually vote on these implementations, to a question about what happens if the president, vice president and speaker of the house are all unable to assume position.
The panel then explored the question of “how do we define incapacity now?”
“In the 1990s, they actually wanted to remove the president for [just] not doing a very good job,” Says Dr. Snook. “If you look at the last two most recent presidents, they have both had significant numbers of people in the press and the government suggest that maybe they are incapacitated.”
From an international perspective, while the 25th Amendment is “imperfect or undefined as it is, the US is still ahead of the curve.” Dr. Kersey said. “A number of countries, particularly large countries, have no mention whatsoever of medical incapacity in their constitutions, no procedures for medical incapacity, or if they do, they are relatively vague”
Countries like Portugal and Guyana use a medical panel to evaluate the president’s fitness and health. Due to its ambiguous phrasing, as Dr. Kersey explains, the Cabinet could do something like this using Section four.
This idea of medical evaluation led to the question of if presidents should be entitled to medical privacy. The annual evaluation presidents currently undergo with their own private physician “might not be robust enough,” Dr. Kersey argued. “If we wanted to really get serious about this idea of evaluating medical incapacity, we would need to have much more specifics.”
Overall, the panel covered the history, uses, pros and cons of the 25th Amendment, sparking a dialogue about one of the country’s most important practices.
