Miller Center

When President Warren Harding died in office in 1923, no clear line of succession existed beyond the vice president. The states ratified the Twenty-Fifth Amendment in 1967 to clarify the ambiguous language in the Constitution. In 1988, the National Commission on Presidential Disability and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment looked at potential difficulties that might arise in extremely complicated succession scenarios. Former U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell and former Senator from Indiana Birch E. Bayh, Jr. co-chaired the Commission.

The National Commission on Presidential Disability and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment (1988)

Read the Commission's Final Report (Adobe Acrobat)

Co-Chairs:

Herbert Brownell, U.S. Attorney General, 1953-1957

Birch E. Bayh, Jr., U.S. Senator from Indiana, 1963-1981 (Partner, Venable)

Vice-Chair:

Mortimer M. Caplin, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 1961-1964, Founder and Member, Caplin & Drysdale; Professor Emeritus of the University of Virginia School of Law

Commissioners:

Phillip W. Buchen, Counsel to the President, 1974-1977

Warren E. Burger, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1969-1986

M. Caldwell Butler, Member, U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia, 1972-1983

Carolyne K. Davis, Administrator, Health Care Financing Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1981-1985

Nancy M. Neuman, Manager of the Healthcare Financing Administration, 1981-1985

Karen O�Neil

Chalmers M. Roberts, Chief Diplomatic Correspondent, The Washington Post, 1953-1971

Dr. M. Roy Schwartz, Senior Vice President of the American Medical Association; Dean of the University of Colorado School of Medicine; Vice Chancellor of the Health Sciences Center

W. Reece Smith, Jr., President, American Bar Association (Of Counsel, Carlton Fields)

William B. Spong, Jr., U.S. Senator from Virginia, 1966-1973

Commission Director:

Kenneth W. Thompson, Director of the Miller Center, 1978-1998