The 25th Amendment Has Four Sections and Only One Has Never Been Used

For the first 178 years of the Republic, the most important question in American government, who is in charge if the President cannot be, was answered by a sentence so vague that the Vice President who first had to use it essentially settled it by refusing to take no for an answer. For nearly eighty days in 1881, a President lay dying and nobody knew who was entitled to govern. For months in 1919 and 1920, another President was gravely disabled, and the country was not told the extent of it.

The 25th Amendment was written to end that confusion. It has four sections. Three have been used, some of them more than once. The fourth, the one that lets the Vice President and the Cabinet declare a sitting President unable to serve, has never been invoked. Let us read each section in order, see how it came to be, and consider why that fourth section is built the way it is.

The original clause and its gaps

The Constitution of 1787 handled succession in Article II, Section 1, Clause 6:

In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.

Read it as a lawyer would and three questions jump out. What is "the Same" that devolves on the Vice President: the office itself, or only its powers and duties? Who decides when a President suffers an "Inability"? And how is that inability ended? The clause answered none of them. Nor did it provide any way to fill a vacancy in the vice presidency, which happened every time a Vice President died, resigned or succeeded to the presidency.

The Tyler precedent, 1841

President William Henry Harrison died on April 4, 1841, one month after his inauguration. Vice President John Tyler was at home in Virginia. When he arrived in Washington, members of the Cabinet and of Congress suggested that he was merely acting President, exercising the powers of an office that remained, in some sense, Harrison's.

Tyler would have none of it. He took the presidential oath, moved into the White House, and insisted on being addressed as President. Letters addressed to the "Acting President" were, by his instruction, returned unopened. Critics mocked him as "His Accidency." But both houses of Congress eventually passed resolutions recognizing him as President, and the precedent held. When Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, Warren Harding, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy died in office, each Vice President became President without serious dispute.

Tyler was an unpopular President in many respects, expelled from his own party's good graces within months. But on this point he did the country a service. A nation cannot afford to wonder whether its chief executive is real.

The disability problem, 1881 to 1963

The death of a President was settled by Tyler. Disability was not.

When President Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881, he lingered until September 19. For roughly eighty days he was largely unable to govern. Vice President Chester Arthur, belonging to a rival faction of the party and fearing he would be seen as a usurper, did nothing to assume the President's powers. The government drifted.

In October 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a severe stroke. For the remainder of his term he was disabled to a degree his wife, his physician and a small circle concealed from the public and much of the government. No mechanism existed to transfer power, and nobody used the one sentence the Constitution offered.

President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in 1955, an abdominal operation in 1956 and a mild stroke in 1957. He and Vice President Richard Nixon worked out a private letter agreement for handling a disability, but it had no force of law.

Then, on November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Lyndon Johnson became President, the vice presidency was vacant, and under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 the next two in line were the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate, both elderly. The danger was obvious. Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana led the effort for an amendment. Congress approved it on July 6, 1965, and it was ratified on February 10, 1967.

Section 1, death, resignation or removal

In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

Notice the verb: "shall become President." Not "shall act as President." Section 1 wrote the Tyler precedent into the text, ending any debate about whether a successor holds the office or only its powers.

Use. Section 1 was applied on August 9, 1974, when President Nixon resigned and Vice President Gerald Ford became President. It was the first time a President had left office by resignation.

Section 2, filling a vacant vice presidency

Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

The President nominates; both houses must confirm by simple majorities. Including the House was deliberate. Because the House is closer to the people, its participation gives an unelected Vice President some measure of popular sanction.

Use. Twice, within fourteen months. On October 10, 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned. President Nixon nominated House Minority Leader Gerald Ford two days later. The Senate confirmed him, the House followed, and Ford took the oath on December 6, 1973. Then, after Ford became President in August 1974, he nominated former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who was confirmed and sworn in on December 19, 1974.

For more than two years, the country was led by a President and a Vice President neither of whom had been elected to his office by the national electorate. The system held. That is the best evidence that Section 2 was well designed: it worked under the most strained circumstances of the century.

Section 3, a President steps aside voluntarily

Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.

Section 3 is entirely in the President's hands. He declares himself unable, in writing, to the two congressional officers, and the Vice President becomes Acting President until the President writes again.

Use. On July 13, 1985, President Ronald Reagan, about to undergo surgery under general anesthesia, sent a letter transferring power to Vice President George H. W. Bush for several hours. Reagan's letter was carefully worded, saying he did not believe the amendment was meant to apply to such brief periods but was acting consistently with its provisions. President George W. Bush invoked Section 3 formally on June 29, 2002, and again on July 21, 2007, each time for a colonoscopy under sedation, with Vice President Dick Cheney serving as Acting President for about two hours. President Joe Biden did the same on November 19, 2021.

Section 3 has become routine for planned medical procedures. That is a sign of maturity. A President who hands over power for two hours and takes it back is demonstrating, in a small way, that the office belongs to the Constitution and not to the man.

Section 4, the one that waits

Section 4 is the longest. Its first paragraph:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Here is how it works, in steps.

1. The Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet secretaries (or of a body Congress may create by law, which it never has) send a written declaration to the President pro tempore and the Speaker.
2. The Vice President immediately becomes Acting President.
3. The President may then send his own written declaration that no inability exists, and he resumes his powers.
4. Unless, within four days, the Vice President and the same majority send a second declaration repeating that the President is unable.
5. Congress then decides. If not in session, it must assemble within forty-eight hours. It has twenty-one days to vote.
6. If two-thirds of both houses vote that the President is unable, the Vice President continues as Acting President. Otherwise, the President resumes his office.

Notice the architecture. The initial trigger requires the Vice President plus a majority of the President's own appointees, people he chose, whom he can fire, and who owe him their positions. The contested case requires two-thirds of both houses, the same supermajority as a veto override and a higher bar than impeachment in the House. And the Vice President is never made President by Section 4. He is only Acting President, and only while the inability lasts.

Use. None. It came closest, perhaps, after the assassination attempt on President Reagan on March 30, 1981, when he was in surgery and officials reportedly discussed the amendment but did not invoke it. In January 2021, the House passed a resolution calling on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke Section 4. He declined, and nothing further came of it.

The strongest objection, answered

Here is the most serious criticism of Section 4. It is a loaded weapon, critics say, that a disloyal Vice President and a frustrated Cabinet could use to depose a President whose policies they dislike. Every few years, partisans of one side or the other call for invoking it against a President of the other party. A clause so easily turned into a political tool, on this view, is a constitutional hazard.

The answer, point by point.

1. The text requires inability, not disagreement. Section 4 speaks of a President "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office." A President who is fully able but making choices his Cabinet dislikes is not unable. The drafting history, led by Senator Bayh, made that point repeatedly: the amendment is for incapacity, not policy disputes. Impeachment exists for misconduct, and elections exist for disagreement.
2. The structure makes abuse nearly impossible. The trigger requires the President's own appointees. A contested case requires two-thirds of both houses. A faction that could assemble those numbers for a policy dispute could impeach and remove a President anyway. Section 4 adds no new route to power that does not already exist.
3. The calls for invoking it prove the safeguards work. Partisans have demanded Section 4 more than once. It has never been used, because the people with the power to trigger it understood its purpose. A safeguard that is loudly demanded and soberly declined is a safeguard working as designed.
4. The alternative is worse. Without Section 4, the country faces the Garfield and Wilson problem: a President who is unconscious or incapacitated, with no lawful way to transfer power. A constitutional republic needs a mechanism for that day, and it is better written down with high barriers than improvised in a crisis.

The verdict: Section 4 is not a hazard. It is a carefully built emergency mechanism with a trigger and a supermajority check, and its never having been used is evidence of its design, not a sign of uselessness.

What the coverage gets wrong

When the 25th Amendment is in the news, it is almost always Section 4, and almost always as a partisan talking point. Rarely does a story explain that Section 3 has been used several times for routine medical procedures, or that Section 2 made two Vice Presidents in a row, or that Section 4's contested process requires two-thirds of both houses. A reader who learned the amendment from coverage alone would think it was a political ejection seat. It is a succession statute, written into the Constitution, that has quietly worked for half a century.

For more on the office the amendment protects, read The Executive Power Shall Be Vested in a President, and Every Word Counts and Eleven Questions About Presidential Power, Answered From Article II. Hamilton's case for a single, energetic executive, which explains why a clear succession matters so much, is read in Federalist 70 Read Closely, Hamilton's Case for Energy in One Executive. And for the impeachment alternative, see George Mason Lost the Word Maladministration and Impeachment Was Born Narrow.

The case in brief

1. Article II's original succession clause left open whether a successor held the office, who decided disability, and how a vice-presidential vacancy was filled.
2. Section 1 wrote the 1841 Tyler precedent into the text; Section 2 let Nixon appoint Ford in 1973 and Ford appoint Rockefeller in 1974.
3. Section 3 has been used for planned medical procedures, by Reagan in 1985, by George W. Bush in 2002 and 2007, and by Biden in 2021.
4. Section 4 has never been invoked, and its trigger by the President's own Cabinet and its two-thirds check in Congress make it an emergency tool, not a political weapon.

What you can do: read the full text of the 25th Amendment on our Constitution page, and the next time someone calls for invoking Section 4, ask them to show which words of it the facts satisfy.