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The Constitutional Politics Of Presidential Succession, Richard Albert

Hofstra Law Review

The current line of presidential succession is no safer than playing presidential roulette. It imprudently privileges politics and tradition over competence and leadership. We should rethink the rules that currently govern succession to the Presidency – legal and constitutional rules that, in my view, serve the wrong institutional and political interests. The task I have given myself in these pages is to propose and defend an alternative to the current presidential succession regime: revising the order of succession to insert former living presidents – in reverse chronological order of service beginning with former presidents of the same party as the …