3 U.S.C. ยง 19(b) states "If...the Speaker fails to qualify as Acting President, then the President pro tempore of the Senate shall...act as President," and 19(d) says "If, by reason of...failure to qualify, there is no President pro tempore to act as President under subsection (b) of this section, then the officer of the United States who is highest on the following list...shall act as President." However, 19(e) spells out that subsections (b) and (d) only applies to officers who are constitutionally eligible to be president, which implies to me that "fails to qualify" is referring to other qualifications outside the Constitution. What other qualifications is this referring to? Or am I misreading this and 19(e) is just redundant for the Speaker and President pro tempore?
2 Answers
The Constitution provides for these requirements for a candidate to qualify for the office of the President:
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
For the House of Representatives the qualifications are:
No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.
The Constitution doesn't provide any special qualifications for the office of the Speaker, so conceivably anyone qualified to be a member of the House can be its speaker. In fact, there were discussions during the last congress of appointing Donald Trump as the speaker, and he wasn't even a member of the House.
Similarly, for Senate:
No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.
So a person can be a member of the Congress (House or Senate) while not being qualified to be a President (either because of age, residency, or because of citizenship), even if elected to be the Speaker or President pro tempore.
There are no special constitutional requirements for a Cabinet position other than a Senate confirmation, so similarly any other candidate in the line of succession may not qualify.
Subsection (e) clarifies that limitation.
Also, the 22nd amendment adds term limits:
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
However it restricts the qualification for election, conceivably one may end up acting as a President under 3 USC 19 even after completing two terms (e.g.: a past 2-term president elected to be the Speaker and then succeeds). Whether the limitation of the 22nd amendment applies in such a case is probably going to be determined when such an unlikely situation arises.
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Subsections (b) and (d) say what happens when the Speaker of the House and President pro tempore of the Senate, respectively, "fails to qualify as Acting President", but it does not explain what would make someone fail to qualify as Acting President. Nowhere in the Constitution does it provide what would make someone "fail to qualify as Acting President". The Constitution provides qualifications to be President and Vice President, but Acting President is not the President. The Constitution provides that Congress provide by law who shall "act as President" in the case of disability of both the President and Vice President, but the Constitution does not require that the person Congress provides as Acting President meet the same qualifications as President.
Subsection (e) is not redundant because it provides something that would make someone fail to qualify as Acting President under the Act. But subsection (e) doesn't say what happens when the Speaker and/or the President pro tempore fails to qualify, so subsections (b) and (d) are not redundant because they provide what happens when the Speaker and/or the President pro tempore fails to qualify due to subsection (e).
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