
Congrats to Condi Rice, Joe Biden and Obama, all of whom became President today. - yummyfajitas
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2009/01/20/remember-when-biden-was-president/
======
zain
If Obama was not president because he wasn't sworn in yet, then certainly
neither Biden nor Rice were president either since they hadn't sworn in.

Per the 20th amendment[1], the new president's term begins immediately after
the old president's term ends. This means that Obama became president at
12:00, even without being sworn in. He couldn't "enter on the execution of his
office" until he was sworn in, but he was nonetheless president.

[1] <http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am20>

~~~
mlinsey
Furthermore, even if you buy that at 12:00 Bush and Cheney's terms had ended
but Biden and Obama's had not begun, wouldn't the proper order of succession
made Nancy Pelosi the president? I'm having trouble envisioning any
interpretation which would have made Rice the president.

~~~
iigs
This is addressed in TFA:

 _(6) Neither Nancy Pelosi nor Robert Byrd actually resigned their seats in
the Congress. Thus, neither of them qualified to become Acting President under
the Presidential Succession Act. Plus, interbranch appointments might be
unconstitutional anyhow. See Akhil Reed Amar and Vikram David Amar, Is the
Presidential Succession Law Constitutional?, 48 Stan. L. Rev. 113 (1995); but
see Howard Wasserman, Structural Principles and Presidential Succession, 90
Ky. L.J. 345 (2002)._

furthermore, to the parent comment:

 _I suppose the obvious counterargument is that Secretary Rice also never took
the Oath prescribed in Art. II, Sec. 1, cl. 8, and thus was no more qualified
than Barack Obama or Joe Biden to act as President at 12:00 noon. But if
Secretary Rice was not President from noon to 12:01, then who was?_

Verdict: today is an interesting meatspace reminder to check your edge cases.

~~~
randallsquared
"Verdict: today is an interesting meatspace reminder to check your edge
cases."

Actually, it's also a reminder that, like plentyoffish, a working system can
ignore edge cases and be incredibly successful for unrelated reasons, and only
a few people will complain about the failure at the edge. :)

------
epall
Wow. So geeks sit around in forums arguing the finer points of eigenclasses,
and constitutional lawyers sit around in forums arguing about who is president
during a 60-second period. Awesomeness!

------
lacker
Ridiculous.

Here's a better debunking than I can give myself:

[http://yazilikaya.blogspot.com/2009/01/first-legal-
wrangling...](http://yazilikaya.blogspot.com/2009/01/first-legal-wranglings-
of-obama.html)

 _But many have noted that his legitimacy is not really in question because he
officially became President Obama (pause to savor that...) at noon, and the
oath is just a formality. Amendment XX apparently confirms this:

The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th
day of January . . . and the terms of their successors shall then begin.

From a practical standpoint, Amendment XX might have functionally eliminated
the oath requirement since it is not really possible to separate being
president and executing the office of president, and the amendment is very
clear that there are no obstacles to taking office after noon on 1/20. That's
my interpretation -- I think if this were ever seriously challenged in court,
the elimination of the oath as a Constitutional requirement would be the
result.

Also, the VP's oath is only mandated by statute. ALSO, because of Amendment
XX, and contra Katie Couric, Biden was not president for five minutes today._

~~~
neilc
_Ridiculous._

On what grounds is it "ridiculous"? The cited article quotes a professor of
constitutional law, your linked article is from a random blogger (who seems
remarkably confident about what he "thinks" would happen if it were ever
challenged in court). At first glance, both interpretations seem plausible.

~~~
jodrellblank
_1) If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the
beginning of his term, 2) or if the President elect shall have failed to
qualify, then 3) the Vice President elect shall act as President until a
President shall have qualified_

1) Did not happen, Obama was chosen (President Elect) weeks ago. 2) Did not
happen, Obama was at no point refused the Presidency between his election and
his inauguration. Consequently 3) did not happen.

Anyway, if Obama was not president because he had not been sworn in then
nobody else was for the same reason, and if you follow the argument in the
blog then you get to "the {XYZ Position} shall act as President". Acting _as_
president is not _being_ president anymore than acting as a Spaniard makes you
a Spaniard.

Also, if you read "Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall
take the following oath. . . ” without any surrounding context then it's
vague. There is no office of President-Elect, Barack Obama has no office, so
it could read:

 _Before he [The President] enter on the Execution of his Office..._

As in, someone has to be President before being able to take oath and execute
the office of President. Similar (in my layman's terms) to how ex-presidents
retain the title of President without executing the office of president.

 _But if Secretary Rice was not President from noon to 12:01, then who was?_

If you guys had a constitution written in Haskell you could have a "maybe
nobody" president and it could be lazily-evaluated so this question would
never be explored until it was really needed.

 _The cited article quotes a professor of constitutional law_ Fallacy of
"proof by appeal to authority" alert.

~~~
jimbokun
"If you guys had a constitution written in Haskell you could have a "maybe
nobody" president and it could be lazily-evaluated so this question would
never be explored until it was really needed."

Wow, you just seamlessly combined constitutional law geekery with computer
science geekery in a way that actually made sense. I wonder if this has ever
been accomplished before now.

I also wonder what President Obama himself makes of all this, given that he IS
a constitutional law scholar. This is a good reason to give the man his
Blackberry back, so he can directly weigh in on important questions like this.

------
mattmaroon
I just assumed it was a 3 minute tape delay like a sporting event or award
show, just in case Dick Cheney accidentally blurted out an obscenity near an
open mic.

------
ivey
It's funny to see someone who claims to be an expert be so wrong. We can learn
something from that.

~~~
likpok
Sometimes people can be willfully ignorant. Take doctor's who believe in
homeopathy, or CS students who don't believe in uncountability (I know one).

------
DanielBMarkham
So at 12:01 Condi Rice, who actually is a black belt, takes out Biden and
Obama, immediately pulling out a presidential pardon for herself and signing
it. Thus she would be #44 (and the first black, woman president)

Make a great Kung Fu/Ninja/Steven Seagal movie. I'd probably watch it. If I
were drunk and left in a room with nothing else to do.

I was fascinated at how full-of-holes most laws are. You'd think if the
Congress passed a "Presidential Succession Act" then that would be the end of
that, but no. Turns out, as opposed to what we learned in civics class, simply
because the Congress passes a law doesn't mean that it will ever be applied
the way they wanted it to.

------
jrockway
I would bet that if the US were invaded right at 12:01, Obama would be calling
the shots, not Biden or Rice.

Letter of the law, meaning of the law, and all that.

~~~
throw_away
what if it were invaded at 11:59? :)

~~~
gaius
Then Batman's in charge.

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thomasmallen
Nice to see a link to the city paper; that's my favorite little rag around
here. They did some great journalism on the Thomas Sweat serial arson story a
couple years ago...I'll have to look for the online versions of some of the
better articles I read in there and post them.

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yummyfajitas
Update: my Aunt informed me that there was a private swearing in at precisely
12:00. She claims the 12:03 oath was just for the TV.

She sourced this to an anonymous TV talking head on a channel she doesn't
recall. Anyone able to confirm/deny this?

~~~
siculars
your aunt is wrong. logistical impossibility. that, however, does not preclude
the possibility that obama was indeed sworn in earlier in the day or more
likely the night before.

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jsdalton
Lawyers doing something useful with their time, for a change.

