Synopses & Reviews
Undisputed as the most important synthetic work on the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, this revised edition provides the latest in legal thought regarding presidential succession.This new edition of The Twenty-Fifth Amendment: Its Complete History and Applications updates John Feerick's landmark study with the Amendment's uses in the past twenty years and how those uses (along with new legal scholarship) have changed the Amendment and perceptions of presidential disability in general. In its formulation, the Twenty-fifth Amendment was criticized as vague and undemocratic, but it has made possible swift and orderly successions to the highest offices in the U.S. government during some of the most extraordinary events in American history. The extent of its authority has been tested over the years: During the Watergate crisis, it was proposed that the Amendment might afford a means by which a president could transfer presidential power during an impeachment proceeding, and it was also suggested that the Amendment could authorize a vice president and cabinet to suspend a president during a Senate impeachment trial. Where once presidential disability was stigmatized, today a president under general anesthesia cedes presidential authority for the length of the procedure with little controversy. The Twenty-fifth Amendment is evolving rapidly, and this book is an invaluable guide for legal scholars, government decision makers, historians, political scientists, teachers, and students studying the nation's highest offices.
Review
". . . Superbly analyzes the practical and constitutional problems."--New York Law Journal, from the first edition
"A unique and useful reference."-Kirkus Review, from the first edition
". . . the best work on the subject."-Library Journal, from the first edition
Synopsis
This new edition of The Twenty-Fifth Amendment: Its Complete History and Applications updates John Feerick's landmark study with the Amendment's uses in the past twenty years and how those uses (along with new legal scholarship) have changed the Amendment and perceptions of presidential disability in general. In its formulation, the Twenty-fifth Amendment was criticized as vague and undemocratic, but it has made possible swift and orderly successions to the highest offices in the U.S. government during some of the most extraordinary events in American history. The extent of its authority has been tested over the years: During the Watergate crisis, it was proposed that the Amendment might afford a means by which a president could transfer presidential power during an impeachment proceeding, and it was also suggested that the Amendment could authorize a vice president and cabinet to suspend a president during a Senate impeachment trial. Where once presidential disability was stigmatized, today a president under general anesthesia cedes presidential authority for the length of the procedure with little controversy. The Twenty-fifth Amendment is evolving rapidly, and this book is an invaluable guide for legal scholars, government decision makers, historians, political scientists, teachers, and students studying the nation's highest offices.
About the Author
John D. Feerick is Professor and former Dean of Fordham Law School. In 1964 he was a member of the American Bar Association Conference on Presidential Inability and Vice Presidenial Vacancy, the recommendations of which helped shape the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He served from 1987 to 1990 as Chairman of the New York State Commission on Government Integrity, the collected reports of which were published by Fordham University Press as Government Ethics Reform in the 1990s (1991).
Table of Contents
Introduction by Joel K. Goldstein
Preface to the Third Edition
Acknowledgments from the 1992 Edition
Foreword to the 1976 Edition
Preface to the 1976 Edition
I The Problems
1. Presidential Inability
2. Vice-Presidential Vacancy
3. Succession Beyond the Vice Presidency
II The Solution
4. Early Steps to Solve the Inability Problem
5. Senate Passage of S. J. Res. 139
6. Congress Acts
7. Ratification
8. An Analysis of Sections 1, 2, 3, and 4 of the Amendment
III Implementations of the Solution
9. The Resignation of Spiro T. Agnew
10. The Substitution of Gerald R. Ford
11. The Resignation of Richard M. Nixon and Succession of Gerald R. Ford
12. The Installation of Nelson A. Rockefeller
13. The Uses and Non-Uses of Section 3
IV Continued Interest and Efforts to Change
14. Congressional Action
15. Symposia, Scholarship, and Commissions
16. Representation of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment in Popular Culture
V An Evaluation
17. Appraisal
18. Recommendations
Appendixes
A. Section-by-Section Development of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment
B. Constitutional Provisions on Succession
C. Statutory Succession Laws
D. Presidential and Vice-Presidential Vacancies
E. Times During Which the Speaker, the President pro tempore, or Both Were from a Party Different
from the President's
F. Rule Number 9 of the Republican Party 317
G. Selected Sections of the Charter and Bylaws of the Democratic Party
H. Letter from President Lyndon B. Johnson to House Speaker John W. McCormack
I. Schedule of Gerald Ford for August 9, 1974
J. Twenty-Fifth Amendment Memo Prepared for President Gerald R. Ford
Notes
Bibliography
Index