Posts Tagged ‘biden presidency’
Remember When Biden Was President?
I think Joe Biden was president for a few minutes there, today, if my jailhouse reading of constitutional law is correct. The constitution says that "Before he enter on the Execution of his Office," the president-elect has to take an oath of office. The 20th Amendment says that "The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January," and that "If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified."
Biden was sworn in before noon; Obama wasn't. What are your memories of the brief Biden presidency? Yo Yo Ma played the whole time!
UPDATE 1:21 p.m.: My friend Ken Katkin, an actual constitutional law professor, wrote this on my Facebook page (Ken, please don't sue me!) in response to another friend who asked whether the oath weren't meaningless:
No, the oath is *not* legally meaningless, even if it is a ritual. Art. II Sec 1. Cl. 8 of the US Const. clearly states that "Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following oath. . . " Therefore, from 12:00 noon until about 12:01 pm today, the President of the USA was Condoleeza Rice. From 12:01 until about 12:03 pm the President of the USA was Joe Biden. Interestingly, this means that, technically, Obama was *not* the first African-American President! (And yes, I actually am a constitutional law professor!).
I was right! Joe Biden WAS PRESIDENT!
Ken also wrote:
I should add that the language of the Presidential Succession Act actually puts the Speaker of the House of Representatives (Nancy Pelosi) ahead of the Secretary of State in the line of Presidential succession. But most Constitutional scholars believe that an "interbranch appointment" of this nature would unconstitutionally violate the doctrine of Separation of Powers. Which is why I said that the Secretary of State would be next in line, rather than the Speaker of the House.
This is, obviously, completely awesome.
