Twentieth Amendment

Originalist note

The Twentieth Amendment is a 1933 structural correction, not a reinterpretation of founding-era text, so it has no founding-era originalist source to trace — Madison's Notes, Elliot's Debates, the Founders' Constitution, and Story's Commentaries predate it by more than a century and say nothing about it. Its purpose was mechanical: Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 fixed the President's term at four years, and a resolution of the Confederation Congress had commenced government under the Constitution on March 4, 1789, fixing that date as the inaugural turnover point. By the twentieth century this produced a long "lame duck" interval — outgoing officeholders, including members of Congress defeated or retired at a November election, continued to exercise power until the following March. Sections 1 and 2 close that gap by moving the transition dates forward; no doctrine departs from this original, entirely textual purpose.

Modern doctrine (Annotated Constitution)

Section 1 — Terms (Amdt20.S1.1)

Section 1 moved the end of the presidential and vice-presidential terms to noon on January 20 and the end of Senate and House terms to noon on January 3, from the prior effective dates keyed to March 4, 1789. Ratification on February 6, 1933 accordingly shortened the terms of the President and Vice President elected in 1932 by the interval between January 20 and March 4, 1937. It likewise shortened, by the interval between January 3 and March 4, the terms of Senators elected for terms ending March 4, 1935, 1937, and 1939 — temporarily modifying the Seventeenth Amendment's six-year Senate term — and shortened the terms of Representatives elected to the 73rd Congress by the same interval, temporarily modifying Article I, Section 2, Clause 1's two-year House term.

Section 2 — Meetings of Congress (Amdt20.S2.1)

Section 2 superseded Article I, Section 4, Clause 2, setting an exact hour (noon, January 3) for the annual assembly of Congress, unless Congress appoints a different day by law. The provision recognized Congress's long practice of assembling on that date, which it had enacted into permanent law for the first time in 1867 before repealing that law in 1871. When January 3 fell on a Sunday, in 1937, Congress appointed a different day by law to assemble.

Section 3 — Succession (Amdt20.S3.1)

Section 3 provides that if the President-elect dies before the fixed beginning of the term, the Vice-President-elect becomes President; if no President has been chosen or the President-elect fails to qualify, the Vice-President-elect acts as President until a President qualifies; and Congress may by law provide for the case where neither a President-elect nor a Vice-President-elect has qualified. Pursuant to this authority, Congress passed the Presidential Succession Act of 1948 to address the situation where both the President-elect and Vice-President-elect fail to qualify by the start of the new presidential term.

contradiction

This page dates the Section 3 gap-filling statute to 1948, but the Section 4 discussion below, Presidential Succession Clause, and President of the Senate all document the same statutory line-of-succession history as ending in a single Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (1792 → 1886 → 1947), with no separate 1948 act. Unresolved — needs a source check against the Annotated Constitution's Amdt20.S3.1 text.

Section 4 — Congress and Presidential Succession (Amdt20.S4.1)

Section 4 authorizes Congress to provide by law for the death of any person from whom the House may choose a President, or the Senate a Vice President, once the right of choice has devolved on them under the Twelfth Amendment's contingent-election procedures. Congress exercised this authority in the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, which provided for the Speaker of the House to "act as President," followed by the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, and then by the heads of the executive departments in the order each department was established.

Section 5 — Effective Date (Amdt20.S5.1)

Sections 1 and 2 took effect on the 15th day of October following ratification of the Amendment. Because the Twentieth Amendment was ratified on January 23, 1933, Sections 1 and 2 became effective on October 15, 1933.

Section 6 — Ratification (Amdt20.S6.1)

The Twentieth Amendment was proposed by Congress on March 2, 1932 (Senate passage, following House passage on March 1) and appears officially at 47 Stat. 745. Ratification was completed on January 23, 1933, when the thirty-sixth of the then forty-eight states approved it; Secretary of State Henry Stimson certified its adoption on February 6, 1933.