Could an ex Pres. of the U.S. be given a cabinet post?

[groman]

@Captain Carrot

This part of the Constitution is much more amenable to interpretation in the light of the writers’ intent, and I think it’s pretty clear that they didn’t want anyone to be President for more than 10 years at the most. The top job has a limited possession, and I think they would include the second-top in that category as well.

Well I started googling and bumped into this:

By its terms, the Twenty-Second Amendment bars only the election of two-term Presidents, and this prohibition would not prevent someone who had twice been elected President from succeeding to the office after having been elected or appointed Vice-President. Broader language providing that no such person ‘‘shall be chosen or serve as President . . . or be eligible to hold the office’’ was rejected in favor of the Amendment’s ban merely on election. Whether a two-term President could be elected or appointed Vice President depends upon the meaning of the Twelfth Amendment, which provides that ‘‘no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President.’’ Is someone prohibited by the Twenty-Second Amendment from being ‘‘elected’’ to the office of President thereby ‘‘constitutionally ineligible to the office’’? Note also that neither Amendment addresses the eligibility of a former two-term President to serve as Speaker of the House or as one of the other officers who could serve as President through operation of the Succession Act.

from Analysis and Interpretation of the Constitution Annotations of Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States Senate Document No. 108-17 - 2002 Edition: Cases Decided to June 28, 2002 - Twenty Second Amendment (warning PDF)

Now, this annotation does note that this amendment has not been court tested, but apparently I am not the only one who reads it as if the specific intent was to bar only election as president, because they just as easily could’ve barred eligibility. Exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis (ok, I had to look that one up )

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

@Captain Carrot

a bill negating his eligibility be in the line of succession, spelled out very explicitly that nobody, absolutely nobody gets to be the POTUS or VP for (in his case) more than two full terms.

“A bill” wouldn’t cut it, legally.

This is spelled out in the original Constitution, and 2 Amendments since then. You can’t change that, or “spell out very explicitly” in a plain old legislative bill – only a Constitutional Amendment can do that.

Now a legislative bill would provide a ‘sense of the body’ indication of what they mean, and a court might take that into account. Except that it would be a sense of what this body (the current Congress) means; not what the original Congress that passed the 12th & 22nd Amendments meant. (Or what was meant by the multiple State Legislatures that also had to pass those Amendments.) So a court could just as easily consider all this irrelevant, and rely only on the actual words in the Constitution & Amendments.

[Captain_Carrot]

Could Congress pass a bill specifically stating that Bill Clinton is not eligible to serve as President or Vice President? This wouldn’t be establishing general prohibition, just one case.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Captain Carrot

Could Congress pass a bill specifically stating that Bill Clinton is not eligible to serve as President or Vice President? This wouldn’t be establishing general prohibition, just one case.

Seems like the 14th Amendment would rule that out.

[Captain_Carrot]

@Bryan Ekers

Seems like the 14th Amendment would rule that out.

But the Fourteenth Amendment deals with states making laws, not Congress. If Congress were at stake, wouldn’t the 22nd amendment be unconstitutional?

[Bryan_Ekers]

Wait a tick, when did Congress get put “at stake”?

Anyway, if the 14th doesn’t apply, even in principle, to Federal laws, couldn’t Congress pass one that said, for instance, that colored persons are no longer eligible to vote in Alabama?

In theory, of course.

[Captain_Carrot]

@Bryan Ekers

Wait a tick, when did Congress get put “at stake”?

My poor phrasing. The way I read the 14th, it regards state statutes, and specifically references states making laws.

@Bryan Ekers

Anyway, if the 14th doesn’t apply, even in principle, to Federal laws, couldn’t Congress pass one that said, for instance, that colored persons are no longer eligible to vote in Alabama?

If the 14th doesn’t apply, the 15th, applying both to the feds and the states, giving suffrage to African-Americans, does. And I think the intent was to prevent states from disenfranchising blacks, not Congress from doing so, since it had no intention of restricting voting anyway.

[waterj2]

I would think that Congress could specifically remove a person from the line of succession, as the Constitution gives Congress the power to decide what the line of succession is, and I don’t see any reason that the 14th Amendment would come into play.

So, were Bill to serve as Hillary’s Secretary of State, Congress might not be able to declare him ineligible to be President, but could rewrite the rules of the order of succession to be, say “Cabinet secretaries, excluding former Presidents, in the order of creation of their departments” or whatever. As far as I can tell.