Professor John D. Feerick ’61 was quoted in a Business Insider article about the 25th Amendment.
John D. Feerick, former dean of Fordham Law School, is one of the chief architects of the 25th Amendment who shepherded it through Congress in the early 1960s.
He told Business Insider in March 2017 that the senators who signed the provision into law specified that declaring the president unfit must rely on “reliable facts regarding the president’s physical or mental faculties,” not personal prejudice.
“If you read the debates, it’s also clear that policy and political differences are not included, unpopularity is not included, poor judgment, incompetence, laziness, or impeachable conduct — none of that, you’ll find in the debates in the congressional record, is intended to be covered by Section IV,” Feerick said.
…
The idea is that the Cabinet and VP are the president’s closest advisers, Feerick said, so they would be the ones with the best sense of his mental faculties. They, and Congress, could also consult doctors to evaluate the president’s physical and mental health in order to determine if he or she is fit for the job, though they don’t have to.
…
“In a time like this of unusual crisis, one had to count on leaders in the executive branch and Congress to really be patriots, not partisans,” Joel K. Goldstein, a constitutional expert at St. Louis University, said at a symposium that Fordham Law School hosted in September.
…
Feerick, who didn’t discuss applying Section IV to Trump, said he hopes this renewed interest in the Constitution will encourage Congress to consider filling some of the legal gaps in the amendment that he and other legal scholars have proposed over the years.For example, the Constitution doesn’t outline what happens if the vice president is unable to serve, and he and other experts agree that the order of succession shouldn’t include members of Congress as it does today.
“It’s important that people be educated about the Constitution. It’s our greatest charter of liberty,” Feerick said. “I’m really happy that there’s greater education going on — I’m obviously not happy about all the division in the country — but I’m happy that at least there’s greater education being provided about the amendment.”
