Grounding the Lame Duck: the President, the Final Three Months, and Emergency Powers

Published date01 April 2021
Date01 April 2021
Grounding the Lame Duck: The President, the Final
Three Months, and Emergency Powers
ARI B. RUBIN*
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 908
I. IS THERE A PROBLEM? WHAT PAST LAME-DUCK ACTIONS REVEAL . . . . 909
A. HISTORY OF CONTENTIOUS LAME-DUCK ACTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 911
B. COUNTEREXAMPLES AND EQUITIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 915
C. HYPOTHETICALS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 921
II. JUDICIAL INTERVENTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 922
A. CONSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS AND SEPARATION OF POWERS . . . . . 923
1. Take Care Clause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 927
2. Oath Clause. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 928
3. Term Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 929
4. Impeachment Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 930
B. THE AMENDMENTS AND NORMS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 933
1. The Twentieth Amendment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 933
2. The Twenty-Second Amendment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 936
3. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 940
C. CASE LAW DEALING WITH LAME-DUCK ACTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 945
III. THE NEXT CRISIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 952
A. LAME-DUCK DOCTRINE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 952
B. ENSHRINING THE DOCTRINE IN LAW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 955
* Georgetown Law, J.D. 2020; Wesleyan University, B.A. 2002. © 2021, Ari B. Rubin. The author is
clerk to Chief Judge Matthew J. Fader of the Maryland Court of Special Appeals. Prior to law, the author
was a f‌ilm and TV writer and producer, and he has written opinion pieces for publications including
Politico, the HuffPost, and the New York Daily News. The author would like to thank Matthew D.
Rowen, Professor Lisa Blatt, and with distinction, Professor Paul Clement, whose contributions to this
Note were fundamental.
907
C. HOW THE COURT MIGHT RULE ON EXTREME HYPOTHETICALS . . . . . . 960
1. Allowable Actions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 960
2. Close Calls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 961
a. Commencing a Criminal Prosecution of Electoral
Opponents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 961
b. Funneling State Resources into Personal Wealth . . . 961
3. Prohibited Actions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 962
a. Refusing to Leave Off‌ice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 962
b. Signif‌icant Foreign Affairs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 963
CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 965
INTRODUCTION
A controversial President has decisively lost the election. His successor is months
or even weeks from taking off‌ice with a shadow Cabinet already in place. Perhaps the
new Congress has begun its session.
1
Then the economy craters. Or terrorists strike.
What are the limits on the outgoing President’s power? Constitutionally, there are
none. The old refrain binds: we have one President at a time.
2
But in moments of cri-
sis, is there constitutional guidance or authoritative norms that courts or other decision-
making bodies may harness to prevent a lame duck from making lasting, destructive
decisions? And if so, should those parties intervene?
During the Cold War, leaders devoted untold resources to prepare for a nu-
clear attack that never occurred. Planners perfected continuity of government
plans and built underground cities.
3
But no plans exist for a President who
refuses to leave off‌ice or takes other radical lame-duck actions. Standard checks and
balances—congressional overrides or impeachment—would likely be useless. And
there are no authoritative court holdings for decisionmakers to follow. That is the void
this Note seeks to f‌ill.
1. There is a seventeen-day gap between the beginning of a new congressional session on January 3rd
and the new President taking the oath on January 20th. See U.S. CONST. amend. XX, § 1.
2. See Nolan D. McCaskill, Obama Reminds Trump: ‘There’s Only One President at a Time,
POLITICO (Nov. 14, 2016, 4:00 PM), https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/obama-presser-trump-one-
president-at-a-time-231355 [https://perma.cc/F3LQ-7V8F].
3. See Marc Ambinder, The American Government’s Secret Plan for Surviving the End of the World,
FOREIGN POLY (Apr. 14, 2017), https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/14/the-american-governments-
secret-plan-for-surviving-the-end-of-the-world (continuity of government); Jim Lo Scalzo, How the US
Has Prepared for Nuclear Armageddon–in Pictures, GUARDIAN (June 22, 2018, 2:00 AM), https://www.
theguardian.com/us-news/gallery/2018/jun/22/nuclear-armageddon-us-preparations-doomsday-war-in-
pictures (hardened facilities).
908 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 109:907
It is ideally the courts and Congress—but worryingly the military or
masses—that might choose to act if a President takes radical lame-duck
actions. This Note shows that the other branches have a right and, arguably, a
duty to do so. It goes on to draw a unif‌ied doctrine from the Constitution
and case law proving not only why but also when they should intervene.
To ensure practical and predictable enforcement and help dissuade a norm-
busting President from taking radical lame-duck actions, this Note also urges
decisionmakers to enshrine the lame-duck doctrine into a discrete law or new
constitutional amendment.
This Note proceeds in three Parts. Part I shows that such actions are likely. It
lays out a history of signif‌icant lame-duck decisions and distinguishes between
them, f‌irst according to the circumstances surrounding the actor (what sort of
lame duck the actor is) and then according to the nature of the action. The latter
analysis is based on two axes: (1) whether the lame-duck action is liberty-enhanc-
ing or liberty-restricting and (2) how easily future leaders can reverse the action.
This Part f‌inds that liberty-restricting and hard-to-reverse decisions by electorally
rebuked presidents are the most concerning, and it hypothesizes plausible, radical
lame-duck conf‌licts that might arise.
Part II lays out the authorities that should guide other bodies’ interventions,
all of which combine to an implied constitutional constraint on radical lame-
duck actions. The Note looks to four relevant provisions in the original
Constitution: the Take Care Clause; Oath Clause; Term Clauses; and
Impeachment Clauses. It also considers the Twentieth Amendment (shorten-
ing the lame-duck window), Twenty-Second Amendment (barring third
terms), and Twenty-Fifth Amendment (facilitating presidential transitions).
Where the Constitution proves insuff‌icient, the Note reviews norms and his-
tory in governmental transitions. This Part also considers the limited court
dicta on these issues. This analysis shows a strong intent to limit an outgoing
administration’s powers to ref‌lect the voters’ will.
Finally, Part III ties these authorities together into an actionable doctrine for
other bodies to employ. The lame-duck doctrine already exists within our
Constitution and norms; it is authoritative and will remain a guide regardless of
whether Congress enshrines it. But this Part goes on to argue for bolstering the
doctrine with a law or constitutional amendment that enables a postelection
review of lame-duck actions. The Note returns to the hypotheticals from Part I
and shows how bodies should respond either under the doctrine alone or with a
law to back it. In periods of deep political division, the threat of radical action by
outgoing presidents poses historic challenges. This Note argues that responsible
bodies must prepare.
I. IS THERE A PROBLEM? WHAT PAST LAME-DUCK ACTIONS REVEAL
This Part reviews the history of controversial lame-duck actions, distinguishes
which types of actions are most concerning, and considers four hypothetical
lame-duck crises, which our institutions are unprepared to address.
2021] GROUNDING THE LAME DUCK 909

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