How does the U.S. deal with constitutional crises?

In this post Gadarene suggests that such a scenario would provoke a constitutional crisis. How exactly does the U.S. deal with constitutional crises? Not just ones like the one in that post, BTW. Here in the U.K., the Prime Minister could call a General Election on the issue.

I don’t think your link works. Nothing in the linked post mentions a constitutional “crisis”.

That post doesn’t speak of a constitutional crisis but I’ll answer in the general.

Constitutional Crises are dealt with in the United States…poorly. The eventually get negotiated out by the parties involved, usually two of the three branches. Sometimes they just get delayed until something changes like an election or death or something. But in general there’s a high-level negotiation involved to resolve such events.

Obviously not an option in the U.S.

You’d probably want to define “constitutional crisis” (not sure how feasible that is).

Specifically, he’s talking about leaving Supreme Court positions unfilled. He just linked to the wrong post.

The problem with hypotheticals about U.S. politics is that most of them are confined to the world of fiction. They never happen in practice and so there are no precedents to predict what might happen.

There is no conceivable real-world scenario in which Supreme Court vacancies would not be filled. A behind-the-scenes compromise would be worked out. That’s not a prediction; that’s a guarantee.

A quorum on the Court constitutes six members. So four vacancies would have to left unmet for the Court to stop functioning. That will never happen of natural causes.

In more general terms, there are very few events that could result in a true constitutional crisis in the U.S. Other than the Civil War, all of them have worked out or been worked out. The system is amazingly flexible.

As constitutional crises go, the scenario outlined would hardly make a ripple. The Supreme Court has functioned with vacancies before. They simply accept the most urgent cases and the ones that can be decided, defer the really tricky ones, and muddle through as best they can.

If Congress refuses to confirm judicial nominees, the President can keep sending up new names, or wait until Congress is out of session and make an interim appointment, forcing Congress’ hand.

If the President simply refused to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, Congress could get tired of waiting and impeach the President on the grounds of failing to faithfully execute the laws or something like that.

During the last Constitutional crisis, about 600,000 people got killed. Luckily we haven’t had any since then.

Sorry guys, correct link.

600,000 people died when the Supreme Court decided that George Bush beat Al Gore in the election?

Anyway, Constitutional Crises happen all the time here. To wit, the White House repeatedly declaring lately that no one on its staff can be ordered to speak before Congress.

What generally happens is that one side has greater will than the other, and wins. Right now, the Dems in Congress have no stomach for a serious fight over the matter, so the WH wins.

This meets no definition of constitutional *crisis * I would accept. Constitutional issue, perhaps, but a constitutional crisis can only occur when the functioning of the government depends on the outcome.

That was not a Constitutional crisis, it was a somewhat mundane legal case about election law in Florida. If the Supreme Court had declined to hear the case, that might have caused a crisis of some sort, but given that they resolved the issue, within the framework of the Constitution and the established law, I can’t see how it qualifies.

I was referring the the Civil War, which is the only event that I think conforms to the common definition of Constitutional crisis in this country’s history.

My guess is the last time there was a potential constitutional crisis was November, 1963. Had JFK survived in a vegetative state, there was no mechanism in place to remove him. The necessary steps weren’t formalized until the 25th Amendment, ratified in 1965.

I would say that the last time we were on the brink of a Constitutional crisis was in 1974 when President Nixon refused to hand over the Watergate tapes despite a court order to do so. When the U.S. Supreme Court got the case, U.S. v. Nixon, the President suggested that he would not obey the court if it were a split decision among the justices. This potential Constitutional crisis was averted by the Court’s issuance of a unanimous decision in the face of the Presidential pressure.

More generally (and I think this was an example of this), the U.S. usually avoids Constitutional crises because the various branches of government are pretty reluctant to push things into territory where there will be a definitive crisis. For instance, the current dispute about executive privilege and Congressional testimony has played out very slowly (because nobody wants to overplay their hand) and will likely be resolved by the courts after several years of deliberation and appeal.

In such a hypothetical scenario (a surviving but vegetative JFK) wouldn’t it have been understood that the Vice President would function as the Acting President? Would there be any Constitutional reason why the Vice-President couldn’t make any and all presidential decisions* in the place of an incapacitated president?
*for example–overall command of the military including nuclear missile launch authority; the ability to sign bills into law; veto power; etc…

Prior to the 25th Amendment, the only provisions on succession were the original clause of Article II, sec. 1 which provided: “In the Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or his Death, Resignation or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office . . . and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.”

We have established historical precedent that upon the death of a President, the VP becomes President. but we didn’t have a clear procedure for what to do if a President were temporarily or partially disabled, or more accurately, how to determine when a President is sufficently disabled so as to have an “Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office.”

Were Kennedy truly in a vegatative state after being shot, I don’t think that there would be much question that he was disabled, and that Johnson would step up as acting President. Where it would have been difficult would be if Kennedy were only partially disabled, particularly if his mental functions were impaired. Prior to the 25th Amendment there was no way to determine whether a disability was sufficiently serious for the Vice President to take over the Presidential powers.

Well, part of the potential is Congress dicking around about Johnson’s succession. They could just shrug and let him be Acting President, or they could force a crisis.

Of course, that’s true of just about any situation in Washington.