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Obscure Amendment Day

Could Hillary Clinton (please, people, either use her full name or refer to her as Clinton, the way you do "Obama." Don't go by first names as if she were a Barbie doll. Not that I'm voting for her, and her own damn campaign does the Cher thing, but it is annoying) select Bill Clinton as her Vice President?

Calvin Massey discusses this at The Faculty Lounge. An interesting discussion of the 12th and 22nd Amendments, glorious as they were in their obscurity, now they are thrown into awkward relief in the post and comments:

The 22nd Amendment says only that "no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice" and bars any person who has served "more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President" from being elected President "more than once." But Bill would be elected Vice President, not President, and should Hillary die or resign from office Bill would become President but could not be elected to the office. So, is Bill constitutionally eligible to be VP? If not, why not? And if Bill is eligible to be VP, does this constitutional lacuna bother anybody?

I carry a copy of the Constitution in my (rarely used) briefcase (Really! As TD says, like those conservative senators! Only I'm a liberal! Explanation: I got it as a present from a dear mentorly law prof person), and I kind of skimmed over those with a shrug. But now they're so interesting!

Of course, notwithstanding the political aspects of going back to that "two-for-one" thing, or the feminist aspects of derailing the first viable female presidential candidacy campaign with a "coattail-riding" cast, this is interesting from a con law perspective, so go read the post and comments in full.

Full post as published by Law and Letters on March 19, 2008 (boomark / email).