of a succession on account of the temporary
inability of the incumbent President. Nor has any procedure been
established for determining the question of inability, with the result
that in the two instances of disability which have occurred, those of
Presidents Garfield and Wilson, the former continued in office until his
death and the other, after his partial recovery, till the end of his
term.

The Act of 1792

In pursuance of its power to provide for the disappearance, whether
permanently or temporarily, from the scene of both President and Vice
President, Congress has passed three Presidential Succession Acts. A law
enacted March 1, 1792[40] provided for the succession first of the
President _pro tempore_ of the Senate and then of the Speaker; but in
the event that both of these offices were vacant, then the Secretary of
State was to inform the executive of each State of the fact and at the
same time give public notice that Electors will be appointed in each
State to elect a President and Vice President, unless the regular time
of such election was so near at hand as to render the step unnecessary.
It is unlikely that Congress ever passed a more ill-considered law. As
Madison pointed out at the time, it violated the principle of the
Separation of Powers and flouted the probability that neither the
President _pro tempore_ nor the Speaker is an "officer" in the sense of
this paragraph of the Constitution. It thus contemplated the possibility
of there being nobody to exercise the powers of the President for an
indefinite period, and at the same time set at naught, by the provision
made for an interim presidential election, the synchrony evidently
contemplated by the Constitution in the choice of a President with a new
House of Representatives and a new one-third of the Senate. Yet this
inadequate enactment remained on the statute book for nearly one
hundred years, becoming all the time more and more unworkable from
obsolescence. One provision of it, moreover, still survives, that which
ordains that the only evidence of refusal to accept, or of resignation
from the office of President or Vice President, shall be an instrument
in writing declaring the same and subscribed by the person refusing to
accept, or resigning, as the case may be, and delivered into the office
of the Secretary of State.[41]

The Acts of 1886 and 1947

By the Presidential Succession Act of January 19, 1886,[42] recently
repealed, Congress p