United States presidential line of succession

The United States presidential line of succession is the order in which the vice president of the United States and other officers of the United States federal government assume the powers and duties of the U.S. presidency (or the office itself, in the instance of succession by the vice president) upon an elected president's death, resignation, removal from office, or incapacity.
The order of succession specifies that the office passes to the vice president; if the vice presidency is simultaneously vacant, the powers and duties of the presidency pass to the speaker of the House of Representatives, president pro tempore of the Senate, and then Cabinet secretaries, depending on eligibility.
Presidential succession is referred to multiple times in the U.S. Constitution: Article II, Section 1, Clause 6, the 12th Amendment, 20th Amendment, and 25th Amendment. The vice president is designated as first in the presidential line of succession by the Article II succession clause, which also authorizes Congress to provide for a line of succession beyond the vice president. It has done so on three occasions. The Presidential Succession Act was adopted in 1947, and last revised in 2006. The 25th Amendment, adopted in 1967, also establishes procedures for filling an intra-term vacancy in the office of the vice president.
The Presidential Succession Act refers specifically to officers beyond the vice president acting as president rather than becoming president when filling a vacancy. The Cabinet has 15 members, of which the secretary of state is highest and fourth in line (after the Senate president pro tempore); the other Cabinet secretaries follow in the order of when their departments (or the department of which their department is the successor) were created. Those heads of department who are constitutionally not "eligible to the Office of President" are disqualified from assuming the powers and duties of the president through succession and skipped to the next in line. Since 1789, the vice president has succeeded to the presidency intra-term on nine occasions: eight times due to the incumbent's death, and once due to resignation. No one lower in the line of succession has ever been called upon to act as president.
Widely considered a settled issue during the late 20th century, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 demonstrated the potential for a decapitation strike that would kill or incapacitate multiple individuals in the presidential line of succession in addition to many members of Congress and the federal judiciary. In the years immediately following the attacks, numerous wide-ranging discussions were started, in Congress, among academics and within the public policy community about continuity of government concerns including the existing constitutional and statutory provisions governing presidential succession. These discussions remain ongoing. One effort put forward by the Continuity of Government Commission, a nonpartisan think tank, produced three reports (2003, 2009, and 2011), the second of which focused on the implicit ambiguities and limitations in the succession act, and contained recommendations for amending the laws for succession to the presidency.
The presidential order of succession is set by the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, as amended. The order consists of congressional officers, followed by the members of the cabinet in the order of the establishment of each department, provided that each officer satisfies the constitutional requirements for serving as president. In the table below, the absence of a number in the first column indicates that the office is either vacant, or that the incumbent is ineligible.
Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution sets three qualifications for holding the presidency: One must be a natural-born citizen of the United States (or a citizen at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, in 1788), be at least 35 years of age and have been a resident in the United States for at least fourteen years.
The presidential line of succession is mentioned in four places in the Constitution:
The Presidential Succession Act of 1792 (Full text ) provided for succession after the president and vice president: first, the president pro tempore of the Senate, followed by the speaker of the House. The statute provided that the presidential successor would serve in an acting capacity, holding office only until a new president could be elected. A special election was to be held in November of the year in which dual vacancies occurred (unless the vacancies occurred after the first Wednesday in October, in which case the election would occur the following year; or unless the vacancies occurred within the last year of the presidential term, in which case the next election would take place as regularly scheduled). The persons elected president and vice president in such a special election would have served a full four-year term beginning on March 4 of the next year. No such election ever took place.
Various framers of the Constitution, such as James Madison, criticized the arrangement as being contrary to their intent. The decision to build the line of succession around those two officials was made after a long and contentious debate. In addition to the president pro tempore and the speaker, both the secretary of state and the chief justice of the Supreme Court were also suggested. Including the secretary of state was unacceptable to most Federalists, who did not want the then secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, who had become the leader of the opposition Democratic-Republicans, to follow the vice president in the succession, and many objected to including the chief justice due to separation of powers concerns.
The Presidential Succession Act of 1886 (Full text ) established succession to include the members of the president's cabinet in the order of the establishment of the various departments, beginning with the secretary of state, and stipulated that any official discharging the powers and duties of the presidency must possess the constitutional qualifications to hold the office. The president pro tempore and speaker were excluded from the new line, and the provision mandating a special presidential election when a double vacancy arose was also dropped.
The need for increasing the number of presidential successors was abundantly clear to Congress, for twice within the span of just over four years it happened that there was no one in the presidential line of succession. In September 1881, when Chester A. Arthur succeeded to the presidency following James A. Garfield's death, there was no vice president, no president pro tempore of the Senate, and no speaker of the House of Representatives. Then, in November 1885, Grover Cleveland faced a similar situation, following the death of Vice President Thomas A. Hendricks, as the Senate and the House had not convened yet to elect new officers.
The Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (Full text ), which was signed into law on July 18, 1947, restored the speaker of the House and president pro tempore of the Senate to the line of succession—but in reverse-order from their 1792 positions—and placed them ahead of the members of the Cabinet, positioned, as before, in the order of the establishment of their department.
Placing the speaker and the president pro tempore (both elected officials) back in the succession and placing them ahead of cabinet members (all of whom are appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate), was Harry S. Truman's idea. Personally conveyed to Congress in June 1945, two months after becoming president upon Franklin D. Roosevelt's death, the proposal reflected Truman's belief that the president should not have the power to appoint to office "the person who would be my immediate successor in the event of my own death or inability to act", and that the presidency should, whenever possible, "be filled by an elective officer."
The 1947 act has been modified several times, with changes being made as the face of the federal bureaucracy has changed over the ensuing years. Its most recent change came about in 2006, when the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act added the secretary of homeland security to the presidential line of succession.
Although the Presidential Succession Clause in Article II of the Constitution clearly provided for the vice president to take over the "powers and duties" of the presidency in the event of a president's removal, death, resignation, or inability, left unclear was whether the vice president became president of the United States or simply temporarily acted as president in a case of succession. Some historians, including Edward Corwin and John D. Feerick, have argued that the framers' intention was that the vice president would remain vice president while executing the powers and duties of the presidency until a new president could be elected.
The hypothetical debate about whether the office or merely the powers of the office devolve upon a vice president who succeeds to the presidency between elections became an urgent constitutional issue in 1841, when President William Henry Harrison died in office. Vice President John Tyler claimed a constitutional mandate to carry out the full powers and duties of the presidency, asserting he was the president and not merely a temporary acting president, by taking the presidential oath of office.
Many around him—including John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and other members of Congress, along with Whig party leaders, and even Tyler's own cabinet—believed that he was only acting as president and did not have the office itself. He was nicknamed "His Accidency" and excoriated as a usurper. Nonetheless, Tyler adhered to his position, even returning, unopened, mail addressed to the "Acting President of the United States" sent by his detractors. Tyler's view ultimately prevailed when the House and Senate voted to accept the title "President", setting a precedent for an orderly transfer of presidential power following a president's death, one that was subsequently written into the Constitution as section 1 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment.
Even after the precedent regarding presidential succession in the event of the president's death was set, the part of the Presidential Succession Clause that provided for replacing a disabled president remained unclear. What constituted an "inability"? Who determined the existence of an inability? Did a vice president become president for the rest of the presidential term in the case of an inability; or was the vice president merely "acting as President"? In view of this lack of clarity, later vice presidents were hesitant to assert any role in cases of presidential inability. Two situations are noteworthy:
When President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in September 1955, he and Vice President Richard Nixon developed an informal plan authorizing Nixon to assume some administrative duties during Eisenhower's recovery. Although it did not have the force of law, the plan helped to reassure the nation. The agreement also contained a provision whereby Eisenhower could declare his own inability and, if unable to do so, empowered Nixon, with appropriate consultation, to make the decision. Had it been invoked, Nixon would have served as acting president until the president issued a declaration of his recovery. Moved forward as a consequence of President Kennedy's November 1963 assassination, this informal plan evolved into constitutional procedure a decade later through Sections 3 and 4 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, which resolved the uncertainties surrounding presidential disability.
Nine vice presidents have succeeded to the presidency intra-term, eight due to the president's death, and one due to the president's resignation from office.
Additionally, three vice presidents have temporarily assumed the powers and duties of the presidency as acting president, as authorized by Section 3 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment: George H. W. Bush did so once, on July 13, 1985; Dick Cheney did so twice, on June 29, 2002 and again on July 21, 2007; and Kamala Harris did so once, on November 19, 2021.
While several vice presidents have succeeded to the presidency upon the death or resignation of the president, and a number of them have died or resigned, the offices of president and vice president have never been simultaneously vacant; thus no other officer in the presidential line of succession has ever been called upon to act as president. There was potential for such a double vacancy when John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, as Vice President Andrew Johnson was also targeted (along with Secretary of State William Seward and possibly General Ulysses S. Grant) as part of Booth's plot to destabilize the Union government. It again became a real possibility three years later, when, with the vice presidency vacant, Johnson as president was impeached by the House of Representatives and faced removal from office if convicted at trial in the Senate. Johnson was acquitted by a one-vote margin.
The 25th Amendment's mechanism for filling vice presidential vacancies has reduced the likelihood that the House speaker, Senate president pro tempore, or any cabinet member will need to serve as acting president. In October 1973, the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew made Speaker of the House Carl Albert first in line to succeed President Richard Nixon – but only briefly, as Gerald Ford was sworn in as vice president on December 6, 1973. On August 9, 1974, Nixon resigned the presidency, making Ford president; Albert was then again next in line, but only for the four months it took for Nelson Rockefeller to be nominated and confirmed as Ford's vice president.
Since 1789 there have been eighteen instances of the vice presidency becoming vacant; during those periods, the persons next in line to serve as acting president were:
In 2003, the Continuity of Government Commission suggested that the succession law has "at least seven significant issues ... that warrant attention", specifically:
In 2009, the Continuity of Government Commission commented on the use of the term "Officer" in the 1947 statute,
In 2016–2017, the Second Fordham University School of Law Clinic on Presidential Succession developed a series of proposals to "resolve succession issues that have received little attention from scholars and commissions" over the past several decades; its recommendations included: