Given the clear text and transparent ratification history of the Twentieth Amendment, one might hope that no one would contest its present meaning, but that ignores the Amendment’s political uses. One issue frequently rises to the surface. Often, when an outgoing Congress does or passes anything after the November elections, opponents object that it violates the Twentieth Amendment. In 1998, for example, Yale University Professor Bruce Ackerman asserted that the impeachment of President Bill Clinton by a “lame-duck” Republican House of Representatives after the general elections violated the spirit of the Twentieth Amendment. Twelve years later, the former Speaker of the House that led the impeachment, Newt Gingrich, cried foul on the same grounds when an outgoing Democratic Congress enacted legislation after the 2010 general elections. In politics, much depends on whose ox is gored. The Twentieth Amendment has become a tool in the partisan debates on the validity of laws passed or actions done by a “lame-duck” Congress after the general elections. History shows that there is no basis to such claims.

Picking up the history where the joint statement left off, the second session of the 72^nd Congress in 1932-33 was the last “short session of Congress,” and the last “lame-duck session” as that term was then used. That fact does not mean, however, that the Amendment was intended to bar any future Congress from continuing its second regular session after the November elections or being called into special session by the President after those elections were decided. Prior to the Twentieth Amendment, both “short session” and “lame-duck session” were terms of art that simply referred to the second regular session of any Congress that first convened in December after the elections of its replacement (hence “lame duck”) and adjourned no later than when members’ terms ended on March 4 (hence “short session”). The Amendment’s principal proponent, Senator Norris, consistently objected to the short session due to its length, which he viewed as too short “to do good work,” and not due to its empowerment of lame-duck members. To be sure, some proponents of the Amendment predicted that Congress would not remain in session after the November elections once the Amendment was implemented. They were, however, repeatedly and pointedly warned that such a scenario was probable. They also chose to pass the Twentieth Amendment with its current text rather than opt for a proposed alternative that would have imposed a fixed pre-elections deadline for adjournment.  Norris expressly rejected the alternative precisely because it substituted one type of short session for another and viewed abolishing short sessions as a principal objective of the Amendment.

Much of the confusion stems from the fallacious equation of lame-duck lawmaking with lame-duck sessions. Even assuming that the Amendment’s purpose was to abolish “lame-duck sessions,” when the Amendment’s supporters spoke of “lame-duck sessions” they meant Congress’s old short sessions, which took place entirely after the November elections. They manifestly did not mean to speak of, far less outlaw, continuations of regular sessions that began prior to the elections. As in the joint statement, Norris and the other chief proponents of the Amendment consistently called for not having Members of Congress wait thirteen months before meeting and not having a time-limited second session of each Congress. The Amendment accomplished these goals with totally eliminating the lame-duck period. When the text so closely mirrors the supporters’ stated purposes, those purposes should be accepted at face value, but there is an understandable temptation to think otherwise, especially when that supposed meaning serves partisan purposes.

The issue gains steam whenever an old Congress meets after the November elections, particularly if those elections have shifted power from one party to another in one or both houses. How could the Amendment’s supporters have countenanced lame-duck lawmaking after such a transfer of power occurs? Perhaps it was because they saw the risk of such lawmaking as a lesser evil than a two-month vacuum of power. Perhaps it was because they feared such lawmaking less than an abrupt installation of a new Congress or administration without some time for transition. Perhaps it was because, as politicians, they foresaw benefits in giving an outgoing Congress the option of wrapping up unfinished business following the elections. Or perhaps it was simply because they agreed with Norris when he told the Senate, “I am not casting any insinuation, and this amendment does not cast any insinuation against any man who has been defeated for reelection.” Whatever the reason, the result is clear. The Twentieth Amendment in no way requires adjournment of the second session of post-1933 Congresses prior to the November elections. Indeed, when Norris himself became a lame-duck senator in 1942, without raising the least objection, he participated and voted in Senate meetings held between the November elections and the end of his term in January 1943. He saw it as his duty. World War II was in full swing, and continued congressional action was needed.

Edward J. Larson University Professor, Hugh & Hazel Darling Chair in Law, Pepperdine University School of Law

On January 19, 1937, on the eve of Franklin Roosevelt’s second inauguration, it seemed that all of Washington was consumed by a single subject: the weather. The forecast — rain and cold temperatures — dominated discussion “to the exclusion of almost all other topics,” the New York Times reported, adding that “interest in the weather had been heightened by the fact that this is the first inauguration to take place” on January 20 rather than March 4. The Twentieth Amendment, ratified in 1933, had changed the date. Worries about the weather, it turned out, were well-founded: on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, thousands of spectators stood ankle-deep in mud, their umbrellas no protection against the stinging sleet and slashing wind. One of the few dry seats at the ceremony, up on the reviewing stand, belonged to Senator George W. Norris — father of the Amendment. “They are all trying to blame this on me,” he laughed, but refused to take responsibility for the rain.

The date of presidential inaugurations had, in truth, been something of an afterthought during Norris’ decade-long effort to pass the “lame-duck” amendment. The issue that Norris and other reformers aimed to address was not a lame-duck presidency, but a lame-duck Congress. While the same basic concern — that politicians who have been repudiated by voters can no longer be expected or trusted to represent those voters — applied to both branches, the problem was certainly more acute in the Congress: while an outgoing president remained in office for four months after Election Day, lame-duck legislators served for thirteen months after being defeated.

Still, the interregnum between presidential administrations was long enough to have created problems, even crises, of governance at crucial moments in the nation’s history. The awkward co-existence of a president who had lost his political legitimacy and a president-elect who, as yet, lacked constitutional authority presented obstacles in the face of serious challenges. A protracted period of uncertainty, as Woodrow Wilson observed in 1916, was “fraught with the gravest dangers.” In December 1860, scarcely a month after the election of Abraham Lincoln, a state convention in South Carolina voted to secede from the Union; over the next six weeks, half a dozen more Southern states did, too, fueling a sense of panic in the North. Lincoln was frustrated — at times, infuriated — by his inability to influence events. He said he would willingly shorten his own life by “a period of years” if he could shave as many months off the interminable delay before his inauguration. Throughout the winter of 1932-33, during the depth of the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover — beaten by Roosevelt in November — lobbied the President-elect privately, publicly, and without success, to endorse policies F.D.R. strongly opposed. In a memo to an ally in the Senate, Hoover acknowledged that if Roosevelt had yielded to the pressure, he would have “ratified the whole major program of the Republican Administration” and abandoned “90% of the so-called new deal.”

The Twentieth Amendment narrowed the gap from sixteen weeks to ten — enough time, reformers assumed, for an orderly but not overlong transition and for a new Congress, seated on January 3, to resolve a deadlocked election or replace (according to procedures set forth by the Amendment) a President-elect who has died before taking office. Roosevelt, in 1937, became the first President to take the oath of office in January, but another sixteen years passed before the nation had a lame-duck in the Oval Office. That was Harry Truman, who decided not to run for re-election in 1952 and was succeeded, in January 1953, by Dwight Eisenhower. (When F.D.R. had died in office in 1945, Truman, as Vice President, succeeded him immediately.) Aware that his actions would set a precedent, Truman ran a model transition — setting up personal meetings between the President and President-elect, directing his administration to prepare detailed briefings on policy matters, and permitting sub-cabinet officials to remain in office to ensure that the federal government continued to run smoothly and without interruption.

Yet what Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., called “the postelection interlude of national impotence” has only been reduced, not eliminated, by the Twentieth Amendment. Compared to many other countries — particularly those, like Britain or Canada, with parliamentary systems of government — the U.S. presidential transition period remains peculiarly long, a gap that is always more glaring when partisan control of the White House shifts, and, especially, in times of economic distress or international conflict. As Barack Obama prepared to take office in January 2009, for example, the U.S. economy was in free fall, the nation was at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the credibility of the outgoing president, George W. Bush, was at low ebb. In the weeks after his election, Obama announced a series of actions he planned to take as president, but his relative restraint left some supporters unsatisfied: “[Obama] says we only have one president at a time,” Congressman Barney Frank said. “I’m afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have. He’s got to remedy that situation.”

Hence the proposals, over recent decades, to tighten the transition further still. In the mid-1980s, Senators Claiborne Pell and Charles Mathias introduced a constitutional amendment to move Inauguration Day to November 20, and the swearing-in of the new Congress to November 15. The effort failed, as any future attempt is likely to do — absent a crisis so severe that it galvanizes not only Congress but the states, which hold the power to ratify, or not ratify, a new amendment. And perhaps — the weather in January notwithstanding — George Norris got the balance as close to right as anyone can. It is true that an interval of any real length creates uncertainty and invites a flurry of last-minute, unaccountable action by a departing president. But the process of understanding, staffing, and assuming control of the federal government is as complex an operation as any human being might devise. Some things  — even today, in an era of instant communication — take time.

Jeff Shesol Founding Partner of West Wing Writers

*Note: The Interactive Constitution is being developed over the course of the next two years. So far, Amendments 1-15 have Interactive content, and we are working on bringing you Interactive content for this Amendment. In the meanwhile, the interpretation below is supplied by the Annenberg Classroom.

The four-year term of the president and vice president was fixed by the Constitution in Ariticle II, Section 1. Because time was needed for new members to settle their affairs at home before traveling to Washington to join Congress, March 4 was initially chosen as the date both a new president and Congress would take office. However, as transportation and communications improved, this meant that the departing Congress and president would remain in office for an unnecessarily long time following the November elections. By moving the beginning of the president’s new term from March 4 to January 20 (and in the case of Congress, to January 3), proponents of Amendment XX hoped to put an end to  the “lame duck syndrome (where those who were not reelected had little power to push through their policies), while at the same time allowing for a speedier transition for the new administration and legislators. The amendment was ratified on January 23, 1933.

Amendment XX also provides for succession plans if the newly elected president or vice president is unable to assume his or her position. If the president is not able to hold office, the vice president will act as president. Amendment XX gives Congress the power to pass legislation outlining a more detailed succession plan if the vice president is also not able to carry out the presidential duties until a new president and vice president are qualified.