So there IS an upside…
Yes, and that’s why I used the past tense. I was assuming that we were considering the law prior to the change.
I’m thinking this would be the answer. AFAIK, you can’t retroactively declare a Presidency void and null. I’m sure the Republicans would try and make hay out of this, and they would make a huge fuss on par with what some segments of the Democrats did after the 2000 election…and probably have about the same effect. Which is to say that it would play well among the faithful, while everyone else would roll their eyes or tell them to STFU about it already and get on with life, maybe find a hobby or something.
I doubt Scott Walker will reauthorize much of Obamas agenda.
If I was elected President, and wasn’t born here, I’d have a very nice birth certificate made by the Bureau of Engraving.
So by the time the last day of my term came, born outside the country would be as provable as born on another planet.
Then it comes down to whether anybody believed the lying liar (me).
Are you fucking high?
So we’d retroactively declare that Hillary Clinton wasn’t secretary of state from 2008 to 2012? And all military officers commissioned would be discharged? Every decision made by every person in the executive branch is authorized by the President.
The President is the person certified as President by the Electoral College. If they make a mistake and certify an ineligible person that doesn’t make that person not the president. They were the President even though they were ineligible. You can’t undo eight years of executive branch action, because it would be utterly impossible. If tomorrow Obama rips off his mask and reveals he is an inhuman Fungi from Yuggoth, that doesn’t mean Mitt Romney or John McCain becomes president. It means Joe Biden becomes president. And if people are upset about Joe Biden becoming president then we have constitutional mechanisms for removing him from office.
The fact that a person was ineligible to hold an office does not render their actions while holding that office null and void. If you want to undo their actions, you have to act to undo those actions. This is not just the case for the presidency, it is the case for all offices.
The US does not have something akin to a de facto officer doctrine?
In cases arising under the Appointments Clause, it can become a question as to whether the decisions of an official whose appointment was later found invalid must be vacated.
It does? I thought it only mentioned being a citizen for X years (since birth, perhaps)? I can’t seem to find a good source to clarify.
The Constitution doesn’t require an “official signature”. It requires the President to sign. Obama was selected by the Electoral College and took the required oath of office. It doesn’t matter if he wasn’t qualified to be president; the constitution does not include a mechanism which allows the electoral vote to be overridden (except in case of a tie.)
FWIW.
Every time a (usually military) dictatorship ended in Peru Congress would pass legislation saying “all laws continue unless they expliclty run against the Constitution or things like that” so that if the Dictator passed a new speed limit we wouldn’t have a void in the law.
In the case of Kenya-Obama it’d be wise for Congress to pass such an open-ended law and then, maybe, check any individual cases. You can’t roll back 8 years’ legislation without crashing a country.
I think it’s more than a little disingenuous to imply that things are as simple as that. I don’t think the person selected by the EC can be President simply because he doesn’t meet the qualifications. The Constitution doesn’t say that a President must be 35 years old, be a U.S. citizen OR be selected by the EC. I think the fair assumption is that the EC would be voting on someone they believe to have met the requirements. But the qualifications of age and citizenship are crystal clear. So, if one does not meet those qualifications then he, or she, simply can never be considered President. Now, what to do about it is another kettle of fish. I do agree that if the relegation came while he was in office, then Biden becomes President. My earlier post was assuming it came to light afterwards.
Sure, they’re clear - but the Constitution does not provide a mechanism by which they can be enforced, and Congress has not seen fit to supplement it. So all we have is the EC as arbiter of qualification.
You say that as if the Teabaggers in Congress would actually CARE about crashing the country…
Well, we have the actual qualifications themselves as outlined in the Constitution. It makes no sense that we would have qualifications and if someone somehow lies their way through, that we would be bound by his decisions. You can’t turn back the clock, but you can have the next President re-authorize the legislation he signed. Or not. That seems to be the best course to me. To me, the will of the EC is moot, as it was based on false information.
You’re begging the question. If it is found that a person does not fulfill the qualifications outlined in the Constitution, he, or she, can NOT be President. Anything else is nonsensical.
Like I just said.
That’s not the point. Yes, Biden would be President. And it should fall to him to reauthorize all legislation and whatever other decisions that can be revisited. If it were Biden, he’d probably do it. If it was 2017 and it was Clinton, she would probably do it. But at least then things would have been authorized by an actual President of the US. And no one, is talking about removing Biden from the office if this were come to pass.
I say it does. When we have someone like a medical examiner deemed unfit for the job due to monkey business, every case that was decided with their involvement can, and should be revisited to some degree.
Save it for the Pit, please.
So let’s assume for the moment that the country went insane and declared Obama’s presidency null and void. Why would it be up to whoever gets elected in 2016 to choose which laws he wants to reauthorize? If Obama had been removed from the Presidency during the years he was in office then Joe Biden was his elected replacement. So he should be the guy who becomes retroactive president and gets to make the decisions about which laws he wants to sign.
To use a historical example, if we now declared Bush’s presidency null and void, it wouldn’t be Barack Obama or Al Gore or John Kerry who would become retroactive president. The office would go to Dick Cheney and he would have the authority to decide which of Bush’s decisions he was reauthorizing.
With the birthers, I think the “logic” is that Biden would be part and parcel of the “fraud,” possibly even a co-conspirator.
I don’t know, however, whether even they’d be insane enough to suggest that we put Mitt Romney or John McCain into the White House at once, should this hypothetical come to pass.
Accepting your premise, for the sake of argument: who would make this finding?