John Feerick was quoted in a CBC News article about the 25th Amendment.
Section 4 of the 25th Amendment is the only provision that has never been invoked. It describes procedures for replacing the president in the event of physical incapacitation and was ratified in 1967 in response to the assassination of president John F. Kennedy. Congress was confronted with the question of what to do if the president had survived the shooting and remained comatose.
That’s why Republican strategist Evan Siegfried insists “the only way the 25th Amendment is ever going to be invoked is if this president slips into a permanent vegetative state.”
“It was designed for if somebody was actually debilitated.”
John D. Feerick, former dean of Fordham Law School and one of the amendment’s chief architects, told the Los Angeles Times last year it was devised with medical incapacity in mind but not matters such as unpopularity or “poor judgment, laziness, or impeachable conduct — none of that.”
