Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution in the context of "Vice President of the United States"

The vice president of the United States (VPOTUS, or informally, veep) is the second-highest ranking office in the executive branch of the U.S. federal government, after the president of the United States, and ranks first in the presidential line of succession. The vice president is also an officer in the legislative branch, as the president of the Senate. In this capacity, the vice president is empowered to preside over the United States Senate, but may not vote except to cast a tie-breaking vote. The vice president is elected at the same time as the president to a four-year term of office by the people of the United States through the Electoral College, but the electoral votes are cast separately for these two offices. Following the passage in 1967 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, a vacancy in the office of vice president may be filled by presidential nomination and confirmation by a majority vote in both houses of Congress. This was based on the Tyler Precedent set in 1841 when John Tyler became the first vice president to take over for a deceased president following the death of William Henry Harrison.

The modern vice presidency is a position of significant power and is widely seen as an integral part of a president's administration. The presidential candidate selects the candidate for the vice presidency as their running mate in the lead-up to the presidential election. While the exact nature of the role varies in each administration, since the vice president's service in office is by election, the president cannot dismiss the vice president, and the personal working-relationship with the president varies, most modern vice presidents serve as a key presidential advisor, governing partner, and representative of the president. The vice president is also a statutory member of the United States Cabinet and United States National Security Council and thus plays a significant role in executive government and national security matters. As the vice president's role within the executive branch has expanded, the legislative branch role has contracted; for example, vice presidents now preside over the Senate only infrequently.

Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. (born Leslie Lynch King Jr.; July 14, 1913 – December 26, 2006) was the 38th president of the United States from 1974 to 1977. A member of the Republican Party, Ford assumed the presidency after the resignation of Richard Nixon, under whom he had served as the 40th vice president from 1973 to 1974 following the resignation of Spiro Agnew. Prior to that, he served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 to 1973.

Ford was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He attended the University of Michigan, where he played for the university football team, before eventually attending Yale Law School. Afterward, he served in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1942 to 1946. Ford began his political career in 1949 as the U.S. representative from Michigan's 5th congressional district, serving in this capacity for nearly 25 years, the final nine of them as the House minority leader. In December 1973, two months after the resignation of Vice President Agnew, Ford became the first person appointed to the vice presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment. After President Nixon resigned in August 1974, Ford immediately assumed the presidency.

The Tyler Precedent is the constitutional and political precedent set in 1841 by John Tyler, the vice president of the United States who ascended as president upon the death of President William Henry Harrison. At the time, the Constitution was unclear about whether the vice president should become president or merely act in that capacity upon a president's death. Asserting the former interpretation over the latter, Tyler had himself sworn in as president, moved into the White House, and assumed full presidential powers. Though a politically contentious move, Tyler's position won out and became the norm for presidential successions. Between Tyler's presidency and the passage of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution codifying this arrangement, seven more individuals succeeded to the presidency in Tyler's manner.

An acting president of the United States is a person who lawfully exercises the powers and duties of the president of the United States despite not holding the office in their own right. There is an established presidential line of succession in which officials of the United States federal government may be called upon to be acting president if the incumbent president becomes incapacitated, dies, resigns, or is removed from office (by impeachment by the House of Representatives and subsequent conviction by the Senate) during their four-year term of office; or if a president-elect has not been chosen before Inauguration Day or has failed to qualify by that date.

Presidential succession is referred to multiple times in the U.S. Constitution: Article II, Section 1, Clause 6, the Twentieth Amendment, and the Twenty-fifth Amendment. The vice president is the only officeholder explicitly named in the Constitution as a presidential successor. The Article II succession clause authorizes Congress to designate which federal officeholders would accede to the presidency if the vice president were unable to do so, a situation which has never occurred. The current Presidential Succession Act was adopted in 1947 and last revised in 2006. The order of succession is as follows: the vice president, the speaker of the House of Representatives, the president pro tempore of the Senate, and then the eligible heads of the federal executive departments who form the president's Cabinet in the order of creation of the department, beginning with the secretary of state.

On October 10, 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew (a Republican) was forced to resign following a controversy over his personal taxes. Under the terms of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, a vice presidential vacancy is filled when the president nominates a candidate who is confirmed by both houses of Congress. President Richard Nixon (a Republican) thus had the task of selecting a vice president who could receive the majority support of both houses of Congress, which were then controlled by the Democrats.

President Nixon considered selecting former Texas Governor and Treasury Secretary John Connally, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and California Governor Ronald Reagan. However, Nixon settled on House Minority Leader Gerald Ford of Michigan, a moderate Republican who was popular among the members of Congress (in both parties) and who was good friends with Nixon. Ford won the approval of both houses by huge margins, and was sworn in as the 40th vice president of the United States on December 6, 1973.