how many people have to die for the sec of the interior to become president?
Preisdent Bush
The Vice President Richard Cheney
Speaker of the House John Dennis Hastert
President pro tempore of the Senate Ted Stevens
Secretary of State Colin Powell
Secretary of the Treasury John Snow
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
Attorney General John Ashcroft
Then the Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton
Temporarily Norton has moved up one as Ashcroft is stepping down. So I assume that the Deputy AG isn’t in line.
i thought that defense was lower because they changed the name from war to defense and it pushed the person down. did that ever happen or am i completely incorrect?
Nope, they changed Sec. of War to Sec. of the Army, but demoted that office and Sec. of the Navy to below cabinet level, instituting a Defense Department that included both and the newly-created separate Air Force (formerly part of Army/Dept. of War).
The succession legislation provides that cabinet members succeed in the order of creation of their office; the legislation creating the Dept. of Defense provides that the Sec. of Defense ranks as if he were the former Sec. of War.
There was never a “secretary of the army,” at least not at the cabinet level. There was an army department, under the Secretary of War; and a navy department, under a Secretary of the Navy. The Department of Defense was organized in 1947; it included both the department of the army and the department of the navy, as well as the newly established air force, and its secretary assumed the cabinet-level functions formerly performed by the Secretary of War and by the Secretary of the Navy. There is still a Secretary of the Navy, who reports to the Secretary of Defense and does not hold cabinet rank.
The Presidential Succession Act (codified at 3 U.S.C. § 19) specifically enumerates the successors; it does not provide generally “that cabinet members succeed in the order of creation of their office,” although the specific enumeration does follow that pattern, with one interesting exception. Oddly, the Act still does not include the Secretary of Homeland Security. The act establishing a new executive department customarily adds the department head to the line of succession at the end, so that the line extends through the cabinet departments in order of their establishment. But the act establishing the Department of Homeland Security omitted such a provision – through oversight, I am told by a friend who worked in the Attorney General’s office at the time, but who knows. There was some draft legislation in 2002 or 2003 that would have added the Secretary of Homeland Security to the line of succession, but not at the end – following the Secretary of Defense, IIRC – which would be a departure from the ordinary principle that the cabinet officers succeed in order of their departments’ establishment.
Actually Polycarp is correct. The Secretary of the Army runs the Department of the Army (formerly Department of War) and reports to the SecDef, just like the Secretaries of the Navy and Air Force. The position is currently vacant, apparently.
That’s what I said, Brian, though I portmanteaued all the 1947 changes into one concept. The office that, prior to 1947, had been the cabinet-level Department of War, under a SoW, became the Department of the Army within the Department of Defense, under a SotA, and the cabinet-level Department of the Navy, under a Secretary of the Navy, was also brought under the DoD, and the Army Air Force split off into the Department of the Air Force, under a new SotAF.
(I seem to remember my father telling me that there was a cabinet-level Secretary of the Army for a couple of days, owing to the sequence in which the various elements of the reorganization were put into effect – but I’ve never been able to document that. He was interested in the reorgnization because he’d been AAF in WWII, and I inherit my taste for that sort of trivia from him.)
I wasn’t contradicting Polycarp, just clarifying the distinction between the cabinet-level Department of War before the 1947 reorganization, and the subcabinet-level army department after the 1947 reorganization. I was writing about Presidential succession. What I wrote was that “there was never a ‘secretary of the army,’ at least not at the cabinet level.” That statement is true. There has never been a “secretary of the army” in the cabinet or in the line of Presidential succession. The only defense-related offices in the succession were the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy, until 1947; and the Secretary of Defense, since 1947.
The “secretary of the army” that you and Polycarp are writing about is a subcabinet officer in charge of the department of the army, which was established under the 1947 act that reorganized the defense establishment. (I believe that the title “secretary of the army” did not exist before the 1947 act, but I am not certain.) That officer has never held cabinet rank and has never been in the line of Presidential succession.
You are correct here, with the possible exception of those couple of days my Dad mentioned – and more and more I suspect he was ULing.
The Secretary of Defense was specifically inserted in the line of succession at the former point of the Secretary of War, FWIW – that’s the only connection. BTW, Kenneth Claiborne Royall, Truman’s last Secretary of War, continued as Secretary of the Army until 1949; James V. Forrestal, the last cabinet-level Secretary of the Navy, became the first Secretary of Defense.
Thanks for the correction that the Cabinet members’ line of succession rank is enumerated, and that “order of establishment of office” is the principle underlying the list, not the legislated language.