Presidential line of succession and age According to the US Constitution, the minimum age for the offices of the President and Vice President is 35 years old. The minimum age to be in the House of Representatives is 25 years old. If both the President and Vice President were no longer able to hold office, the Speaker of the House of Representatives is next in line to become acting President. What happens if the Speaker is under 35 years old? Is the Speaker still sworn in? Or do they move down the succession list? What if the rest of the line of succession is below 35?
This is an interesting question. Requirement to &quot;Qualify&quot; The relevant provision seems to be subsection (b) of the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (codified at 3 USC 19. That subsection provides that: (b) If, at the time when under subsection (a) of this section a Speaker is to begin the discharge of the powers and duties of the office of President, there is no Speaker, or the Speaker fails to qualify as Acting President, then the President pro tempore of the Senate shall, upon his resignation as President pro tempore and as Senator, act as President. Thus a Speaker would not become acting President unless the Speaker &quot;qualifies&quot;. I believe this would include fulfilling all the requirements for a President, including the minimum age, and the requirement that the President be a &quot;natural born citizen&quot;. Subsection (d)(1) further provides that: If, by reason of death, resignation, removal from office, inability, or failure to qualify, there is no President pro tempore to act as President under subsection (b) of this section, then the officer of the United States who is highest on the following list, and who is not under disability to discharge the powers and duties of the office of President shall act as President: Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary of Transportation, Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Education, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Secretary of Homeland Security. The Act has never been invoked, nor have either of the two prior Presidential Succession Acts, so there is no case law or precedent available. The Wikipedia article on the Act describes the history of all three versions, and the times when an invocation might have occurred. Questioned Constitutionality The Wikipedia article quotes a statement by Judge M. Miller Baker made during a September 2003 joint hearing before the U.S. Senate's Committee on Rules and Administration and Committee on the Judiciary. This statement argues that the Act as currently written is unconstitutional. The statement reads: The 1947 Act is probably unconstitutional because it appears that the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate are not &quot;Officers&quot; eligible to act as President within the meaning of the Succession Clause. This is because in referring to an &quot;Officer&quot;, the Succession Clause, taken in its context in Section 1 of Article II, probably refers to an &quot;Officer of the United States&quot;, a term of art under the Constitution, rather than any officer, which would include legislative and state officers referred to in the Constitution (e.g., the reference to state militia officers found in Article I, Section 8). In the very next section of Article II, the President is empowered to &quot;require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments&quot; and to appoint, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, &quot;Officers of the United States&quot;. These are the &quot;Officers&quot; to whom the Succession Clause probably refers. This contextual reading is confirmed by Madison's notes from the Constitutional Convention, which reveal that the Convention's Committee of Style, which had no authority to make substantive changes, substituted &quot;Officer&quot; in the Succession Clause in place of &quot;Officer of the United States&quot;, probably because the Committee considered the full phrase redundant.[1] Since the Act has never been invoked, this contention has never been tested in a court. Given the 25th Amendment's provisions for filling a vacancy in the office of Vice-President, the likelihood of the act ever being invoked is much reduced. Notes [1]: &quot;Ensuring the Continuity of the United States Government: The Presidency&quot;. Prepared Statement of M. Miller Baker, Joint Hearing Before the Committee on Rules and Administration and the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate. September 16, 2003. Archived from the original on January 14, 2021. Retrieved July 11, 2018 – via GlobalSecurity.org. [This citation is copied from the Wikipedia article.]
I think your confusion stems from assuming there is a universal definition of "minor" across laws, jurisdictions, and rights. 18 is the age of majority for the purpose of voting (26th Amendment), the death penalty, labor law (although age 14 is the minimum age for employment), and many other laws. But, 21 is the age required to buy alcohol in all states (by their own choice in order to receive highway funding). Nothing requires the age of majority to be consistent across different sections of code or statute or between jurisdictions (except when constitutionally prescribed, like voting age, or minimum age for certain elected offices). There are many counties that prohibit purchase of alcohol at any age. The age of consent varies between 14 and 18 across US states. Age 65 is a threshold for certain tax credits. You need to be 25 in order to be a member of the US House of Representatives, 30 to be a Senator, 35 to be President. You are only protected from age discrimination if you are 40 or older. Here is a rough list of various age-based thresholds for various rights, privileges, or responsibilities in the US. (I havn't vetted this whole list, and some are clearly satire, but the ones I know about are consistent with my understanding.)
We cannot stipulate that a 6 year old does not understand the concepts of life / death / murder / assault, but that stipulation might be baked into the laws of the jurisdiction. In Washington, a child under age 8 is statutorily incapable of committing a crime. Between 8 and 12, there is a statutory presumption that a child is incapable of committing a crime, but that is rebuttable. The statute says &quot;Children under the age of eight years are incapable of committing crime&quot;, and it say nothing about understanding concepts. Florida law used to allow that a 6 year old can commit a crime, then when they arrested a 6 year old, they changed the law. But, the law says A child younger than 7 years of age may not be taken into custody, arrested, charged, or adjudicated delinquent for a delinquent act or violation of law based on an act occurring before he or she reaches 7 years of age, unless the violation of law is a forcible felony as defined in s. 776.08 so a 6 year old can be arrested (charged, tried, convicted) for murder. Virginia does not appear to have any statute declaring 6 year olds to be categorially incapable of committing a crime. The question of capacity is of course a real consideration – insanity remains a defense against criminal charges.
The executive can only make laws within the scope of the powers granted to them by the constitution (of which there are very few) or delegated to them by congress. An executive order that oversteps those bounds is void as recent experience has shown.
Article II, Section 4 of The Constitution says The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. Removal therefore follows automatically from conviction.
Does this mean that anyone who is born in the US is automatically a US citizen, whether they want it or not? Yes (subject to a couple of exceptions, namely the children of diplomats with full immunity and the children of a hostile foreign occupier). Or does this amendment just offer the possibility of requesting citizenship? In other words: is there an action to be made in order to become a US citizen when born in the US (and therefore one is not before this action is performed)? No. For someone who falls under the 14th amendment's citizenship clause, the only way to avoid being a US citizen is to relinquish or renounce it, which generally means that one is stuck with the US citizenship for at least 18 years. Most countries' citizenship laws, or at least all of those with which I am familiar, operate this way—automatically—for "normal" cases of acquisition of citizenship by virtue of the circumstances of birth. This is true whether the citizenship derives from the place of birth or from the parents' citizenship.
With the president, no. In the case where the election results cannot be certified, a safe harbor provision (3 U.S. Sec. 5) allows, if not requires, the state to appoint the electors by alternate means. Under most conceivable circumstances, the process ends here. However, if the House of Representatives refuses to accept the validity of those electors, and the president-elect still has a majority of the Electoral College, the state will simply have no say in the president's election. If rejecting those electors leaves no candidate with a majority of the Electoral College, the House of Representatives itself will elect the president per the process in Art. II of the constitution, as amended by Amend. 12. If the president-elect makes it past all these considerations to the oath of office, the only removal mechanism is impeachment. With other state and federal offices, each state, as well as the federal government, has its own laws regarding disputed elections. But one remedy would have to be a new election.
FERPA protects the privacy of students' records, irrespective of their age or grade level. Age is generally only relevant in determining who can assert those privacy rights. When you enter school at age 5 or whatever, your parents make your privacy decisions for you. When you turn 18, you become an &quot;eligible student,&quot; i.e., eligible to assert or waive your privacy rights without parental oversight.