The Presidential Succession Act, codified at 3 U.S.C. § 19, provides for vacancy in offices of both President and Vice President, and succession through the congressional presiding officers and cabinet officers–16 officers altogether (since I gather from a recent conversation with a friend in the Department of Justice that they haven’t gotten around to amending the Act in order to add the Secretary of Homeland Security yet). I recall reading that the Reagan administration had developed an extended list of presidential successors, in case a decapitation strike affected the President and all the constitutional and statutory presidential successors; I don’t recall seeing an actual list, but I do remember an article in The New Republic speculating that it included then-UN Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick.
The three succeeding administrations have each focused on continuity of government:
These plans were momentarily prominent last year when The Washington Post ran a series on the “shadow government” that the Bush administration had beefed up after the September 11 terrorist attacks. And I still see occasional references that imply, but never spell out, a list of nonstatutory presidential successors.
I could not find the actual text of PDD 67 online, or any other statute or regulation or executive order or directive that relates to presidential succession beyond the statutory successors, let alone an actual list of potential successors. Obviously there are good reasons why, if an enemy had successfully targeted the government’s 18 top leaders, we would not advertise who was Number 19. But in the chaos that would follow a successful decapitation strike, we would surely want clear lawful authority establishing who was in charge, lest the government dissolve into a muddle of military commanders and second-tier civilian leaders competing for primacy. At the very least there ought to be some mechanism for promptly calling Congress into session for the purpose of electing a new Speaker who would become a statutory successor under the Presidential Succession Act. Has anyone else seen or heard about a list of extra-statutory successors, or any documentary authority for such a list?
I believe that, if the President pro tempore of the Senate, Speaker of the House, President, Vice President, and all the Cabinet were knocked out at once, then (in this order) Bill Frist, Mitch McConnell, Tom DeLay, and Roy Blunt would be in line for the Presidency.
Even the Secretary of Veterans Affairs? Quite an accomplishment. There has to be some sort of policy that keeps all of them from being in D.C at the same time, isn’t there?
There is a policy of keeping everyone on the list from being together intentionally. For example, during a Presidential inaugaration or State of the Union address, when normally every member of an administration would be present, one cabinet member is deliberately chosen to stay out of town. However, being as all of these people work out of Washington, DC, I have to assume there are times when they are all coincidentally present in the same city, if not the same room.
Actually, AFAIK, the policy keeps the successors from all being in the same place at the same time, but not necessarily from being in the same city. According to this article from United Press International,
I don’t see how the President could create a supplementary list of successors to the office. The power to determine the succession to the Presidency is vested in Congress, and to exercise that power they must pass a law. Wouldn’t any attempt by the President to create a “B” list be an intrusion on the legislative powers of Congress? See Article II, s. 1, para. 3:
If he thinks that the list isn’t long enough, wouldn’t his only option be to recommend that Congress consider expanding the list, by a recommendation to Congress under under Article II, s. 3?
I suppose the President could establish executive orders indicating that certain officers could perform certain executive functions in his absence (e.g. - a standing order that the Secretary of State could convene the Cabinet if the President and Veep are not available - the Al Haig rule :p), but I wouldn’t think a President could delegate the office itself.
The four aforementioned men are the Senate Majority Leader (Frist), the Senate Majority Whip (McConnell), the House Majority Leader (DeLay), and the House Majority Whip (Blunt). If the President pro tempore of the Senate is eliminated, first the Senate Majority Leader would become President pro tempore, then the Majority Whip. Likewise, if the Speaker is taken out, it would go to the Majority Leader, then the Majority Whip.
It is somewhat confused, but they would probably have better claims for the Presidency than anyone else after the people already in line.
As I recall the order of succession for the Cabinet officers is in order of the establishment of the positions. So Veteran’s Affairs and Homeland Security are already in line of succession simply by their respective departments being confirmed by congress.
But beyond that I think it would require an act of Congress to establish a successor. No one else is specified so those guys outlined by Governor Quinn are SOL.
A caveat: If one of the successors doesn’t meet the requirements (Natural born citizen over 35 resident in the US for 14 years) that position is skipped. So Kissinger would have been out of luck should der tag have occured while he was SecState.
Sen President Pro-Tempore Robert Byrd (I love that)
SecState Colin Powell
SecTreas John Snow
SefDef Donald Rumsfeld
Attourney General John Ashcroft
SecInt Gale Norton
SecAg Ann Veneman
SecComm Donald Evans
SecHHS Tommy Thompson
SecTrans Norm Mineta
SecEnergy Spence Abraham
SecEd Roderick Paige
SecVA Anthony Pricipi
SecHS Tom Ridge
ME!
Note that SecLabor (Elaine Chao) and SecHUD (Melquiades Rafael Martinez) are out of succession because they’re not natural born citizens (China and Cuba, respectively).
Senator Byrd is no longer President Pro-Tempore of the Senate. That honor goes to Alaska Senator Ted Stevens.
Also note that there is legislation in the pipeline (introduced by Representative Tom Davis (H.R. 1354) and Senator DeWine (S. 148) to put Secretary Ridge much higher up in the chain of succession. Secretary Ridge would be after the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, and the Attorney General.
and ** Governor Quinn **, I am not sure that your list of successors to the Speaker and President Pro Tempore would be exactly true. In the Senate, it has been the tradition that the President Pro Tempore is the Senator of the majority party with the longest record of continuous service.
And it is not a 100% certainty that Mr. Delay would be elected Speaker of the House. Remember that Dick Armey was not elevated to Speaker, even though he was Majority Leader at the time that Speaker Gingrich resigned his office, and before Rep. Livingstone had a chance to be elected Speaker. That honor went to one of Tom Delay’s deputies, Dennis Hastert.
Northern Piper, I agree with your constitutional analysis. My question in the OP was partly aimed at whether there is some statutory basis for a B List. I am fairly confident that the answer is no. But at least one administration has evidently reached the conclusion that, in the unprecedented constitutional circumstances that would attend the exhaustion of the list of constitutional and statutory successors, there was some authority for providing for continuity of executive succession. I was mostly looking for the source of that purported authority, whether or not it is constitutionally defensible.
Althoug this is a bit speculative, if the President, VP, Speaker, President pro tem and all of the Cabinet members were unable to serve, I would imagine that one of the houses of Congress could convene and vote in a Speaker or President pro tem, who would then be immediately elevated to President. Assuming that the Speaker/PPT were elected by a quorum, I don’t see how this could effectively be challenged.
I thought that it might be something like that. There are at least two flaws with this reasoning.
First, as shulmahn has pointed out, the congressional party leaders do not automatically succeed to the constitutional presiding offices in case of a vacancy. Governor Quinn, you have correctly listed the congressional pecking order, which often does correspond with the leadership track to the Speakership or the presidency pro tem. But the leaders do not advance until their house formally elects them. (If they did, then there would be no need for a statutory successor after the Speaker, since the next party leader in line would simply succeed to the Speakership and thereby to the Presidency.)
Second, as Jonathan Chance (and, at least implicitly, Northern Piper) pointed out, the Constitution and the Succession Act say what they say, and they say nothing about the congressional party leaders.
The OP was not asking about whether or how the line of succession might be extended (and I have seen numerous proposals, some mentioning the congressional leadership, others focusing on state governors in decreasing order of their states’ population or even the surviving military hierarchy), but rather about whether there is existing legal or purportedly legal authority for a line of succession beyond the Succession Act.
Your first sentence is correct: the Presidential Succession Act does list the cabinet officers in the order in which their departments were established. But the Act still lists each successor by title: there is not a general provision that the cabinet officers succeed in the order in which their departments were established. (As shulmahn mentions, the law can change that order, and Congress is evidently considering that option in the case of the Secretary of Homeland Security.) Establishing a new executive department does not automatically place its principal officer into the line of succession: the Succession Act must still be amended. The statute establishing a new department usually takes care of that detail, so that the two events–establishing the new department, and adding its principal officer to the line of succession–occur simultaneously. But somehow that detail was neglected when the Department of Homeland Security was established.
I’m afraid I have to disagree with you on this, Jonathon. The statutory provision dealing with succession to the Presidency is United States Code, Title 3, s. 19. That provision actually names specific officers as being in the line of succession. It doesn’t say, “Cabinet members, in the order that their Departments were created.”
Paragraphs (a) and (b) of this provision set out the succession of the Veep, the Speaker, and the President pro tem of the Senate. Paragraph (d)(1) then sets out the succession of the Cabinet members:
Congress evidently chose to list them in the order of seniority, but that doesn’t automatically put Tom Ridge in the line of succession. Congress has to amend this paragraph to add his position to the succession.