Module 33: The Twentieth Amendment

Why America Had a Lame Duck: The March 4 Accident

The Constitution of 1787 did not pick March 4. Article I, section 4 told Congress to meet "on the first Monday in December" each year unless it chose a different day. Article II fixed a President's term at four years, a Representative's at two, a Senator's at six. It never said when any of those terms began.¹

The Confederation Congress filled that gap by accident. In the fall of 1788, with enough States ratified to start the new government, it passed a resolution naming March 4, 1789, as the day "for commencing proceedings" under the Constitution. That date became the start of the first terms for the President, the Vice President, the Senators and the Representatives. Four, four, six and two years later, each of those terms would end on a future March 4.¹ Nobody revisited the choice for 144 years.

The combination produced two oddities. A Congress elected in November met for its first regular session thirteen months later, in the following December, unless the President called it back early. Its second regular session opened in the December after the next election and had to end by March 4, because every seat was about to expire. That second session was the "short" or lame duck session, full of members who had already been replaced or beaten.¹ A third oddity followed from the same date. Because the new President and the new Congress took office on the same day, a presidential election thrown into the House was settled by the old House.¹

What a lame duck session could do

The 1800 election shows the problem at its sharpest. Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr each received 73 electoral votes, because electors then cast two undifferentiated votes. The Constitution sent the tie to the House, and the House that decided it was the outgoing, Federalist-controlled one. It cast 35 inconclusive ballots over five days, then chose Jefferson on the 36th, on February 17, 1801.² The Twelfth Amendment came in 1804 (Module 26, The Twelfth Amendment), but the March 4 calendar stayed.

Four days earlier, on February 13, 1801, President John Adams had signed the Judiciary Act of 1801, less than three weeks before his term and the Federalist majority in the Sixth Congress expired. It cut the Supreme Court from six Justices to five and created sixteen new circuit judgeships. The appointees confirmed in the closing days were called the "Midnight Judges."³ Supporters of the act pointed to real defects in the circuit-riding system. Opponents saw a defeated party packing the courts on its way out the door. Both readings were available because the calendar gave a rejected majority a free hand for months.

Presidents suffered the same gap. After Abraham Lincoln won in November 1860, a South Carolina convention voted to secede within weeks, and six more States followed over the next six weeks. Lincoln could do nothing until March. He said he would willingly shorten his own life by "a period of years" if he could shave as many months off the delay before his inauguration.¹ In the winter of 1932 and 1933, Herbert Hoover, beaten in November, spent months urging Franklin Roosevelt to endorse Hoover's program while the banks failed. Roosevelt declined. In a memo to an ally in the Senate, Hoover acknowledged that if Roosevelt had yielded, he would have "ratified the whole major program of the Republican Administration" and abandoned "90% of the so-called new deal."¹

Reformers did not see it that way at first. Of the two lame ducks, they cared more about Congress than the presidency. A beaten legislator could keep voting for thirteen months. A beaten President kept power for four.¹

The Text, Section by Section

The Twentieth Amendment has six sections. Two do the main work, two cover contingencies, and two handle timing. Congress proposed it on March 2, 1932, and ratification finished on January 23, 1933.⁴

"Section 1. The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin."

"Section 2. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day."

"Section 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified."

"Section 4. The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them."

"Section 5. Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article."

"Section 6. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission."

U.S. Const. amend. XX (National Archives transcription)

The National Archives adds an editorial note: Section 2 modified Article I, section 4, and Section 3 superseded part of the Twelfth Amendment.⁴ Two features stand out. The amendment names exact hours and dates, which is unusual for a constitutional text. And it deals with a dead or missing President-elect before anyone had to, a precaution that earlier drafters of the Constitution had left to chance.

George Norris and the Ten-Year Campaign

For well over a century, members of Congress introduced bills to fix the schedule. During the first three decades under the Constitution alone, eighteen bills or resolutions tried to move up the December meeting date. From 1876 to 1924, more than seventy constitutional amendments on the start dates of terms were introduced. None passed Congress.¹

The turning point was the 1922 midterm. Congress had failed to pass President Warren Harding's ship subsidy bill, and in the elections that followed Republicans lost seven Senate seats and seventy House seats, according to the National Constitution Center essay this lesson relies on (other tallies differ somewhat). Harding called a special session of the lame duck Congress for November 20, 1922, to try again. The bill passed the House on the votes of defeated Republicans, 84 to 17, and ten of the yes voters later received presidential appointments. A filibuster killed it in the Senate.¹ The episode became the standard exhibit for reform.

Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska, a progressive Republican who had opposed Harding's nomination, took up the cause as chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee. He reported his amendment on December 5, 1922. Harding opposed it as a personal affront, and the Senate passed it by a wide margin, but House leaders refused to schedule a vote.¹ Norris reintroduced the amendment in five successive Congresses. The text he refined in 1923 became the standard version. Each time it cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he served and later (from 1926) chaired, and each time it passed the Senate far above two-thirds. Each time it died in the House without a vote.¹

In 1931, stung by large losses in the 1930 midterms, House Republican leaders allowed a vote on a modified version that would have kept the short session. Norris opposed it, and waiting turned out to be wise. By December 1931, enough Republican Representatives had been beaten or had died and been replaced in special elections to give Democrats a one-seat House majority.¹ On January 4, 1932, Norris's committee reported the amendment as Senate Joint Resolution 14. The committee gave three reasons: let a new Congress begin work "as soon after election as possible," end the short session, and put a "new House of Representatives fresh from the people" in place to select a President if an election was thrown into the House. The committee report did not list the shorter presidential transition among its principal purposes.¹

The Senate passed the measure two days after receiving it. The House added a seven-year ratification limit and approved its version 336 to 56 on February 16, 1932. A conference committee settled the wording, and the National Archives dates the final congressional passage March 2, 1932.¹⁴ Sources differ on one date in this sequence, and the ratification section below sets out the difference.

Sections 1 and 2: The Two Calendars

Section 1 sets one clock for the executive and another for the legislature. Noon on January 20 ends a presidential and vice presidential term. Noon on January 3 ends the terms of Senators and Representatives. In each case the successor's term begins at that moment, with no gap and no overlap.⁴

The text of Section 1 says "of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified." That clause did the transition work. Terms already running when the amendment took effect were cut short. The President and Vice President elected in 1932 would have served until March 4, 1937, and instead left on January 20 of that year. Senators whose terms were due to end on March 4 of 1935, 1937 and 1939 lost the interval between January 3 and March 4. Representatives elected to the 73rd Congress lost the same stretch in 1935. The Constitution Annotated notes that this shortened terms that Article I, section 2 and the Seventeenth Amendment otherwise fix at two and six years, so the Twentieth Amendment "temporarily modified" those clauses.⁵

Section 5 told the country when all of this would start: "the 15th day of October following the ratification." Ratification came on January 23, 1933, so the next October 15 was in 1933.⁶ That date did not change any government in itself. The first Congress to convene on the new schedule was the 74th, which met on January 3, 1935, and the first inauguration under it came on January 20, 1937.⁷

Roosevelt's second inauguration

The 1936 election gave Franklin Roosevelt 523 electoral votes to 8 for Alfred Landon, so the new calendar began with no dispute about who had won.⁸ The reporting from January 19, 1937, concerned something else. A New York Times story that day said interest in the weather "had been heightened by the fact that this is the first inauguration to take place" on January 20 rather than March 4. Rain and sleet came. Thousands of spectators stood ankle-deep in mud on the Capitol grounds. One of the few dry seats on the reviewing stand belonged to Senator George Norris, who told people nearby, "They are all trying to blame this on me."¹

Section 2 and the end of December

The old Article I clause told Congress to meet on the first Monday in December. The Twentieth Amendment replaced it with noon on January 3 "unless they shall by law appoint a different day."⁹ The amendment keeps Congress's power to move the date. It does not leave Congress free to skip a year: the Congress "shall assemble at least once in every year."

Two practical effects follow. Each Congress now has two regular sessions, one in each year of its two-year term, and the first one starts within weeks of the election.¹ And a newly elected member takes the oath roughly two months after Election Day, where a member elected in 1800 would have waited until December 1801.⁷

The change did not touch the date of the election itself. Congress set a window for federal elections, from November to early December, in 1792, and a single uniform day in early November in 1845.¹⁰ The Twentieth Amendment works backward from that November date to January, and the stretch between them is the transition period in which the outgoing officeholders still govern.

The Lame Duck Session After 1933

The amendment ended the short session. It did not end lame duck lawmaking. The Congressional Research Service defines a lame duck session as one "that takes place after the election for the next Congress has been held but before the current Congress has reached the end of its constitutional term," so any meeting between the November election and the following January 3 counts.¹¹ The category survived because Congress stays free to meet in the fall of an even-numbered year.

The numbers show how that freedom has been used. From the first modern lame duck session in 1940 through 1998 the sessions were sporadic: they happened in 12 of 32 Congresses between 1935 and 1998. Since 2000, both houses have held a lame duck session after every election, and through 2024 there have been 25 of them in all. From 2000 to 2024 those sessions produced 49 regular appropriations acts and 26 continuing resolutions, along with the annual defense authorization bills and other major legislation.¹¹ The CRS cites an analysis finding that post-election sessions are "shouldering more of the legislative workload than they used to."¹¹

How Congress meets after an election

Congress has five routes into a lame duck session, according to the CRS: a law prescribing an extra session, a recess that spans the election, contingent authority given to the leaders when a session recesses or adjourns, continuous pro forma meetings, and a call by the President for an extraordinary session. The last has never been used since 1933, and no Congress has ever created a new third session of the old Congress.¹¹ Congress has nearly always taken the second route: it recesses its existing session over the election and resumes in mid-November.¹¹

A few episodes stand out in the CRS record. The Senate stayed in session from November 7, 1940, to January 3, 1941, the longest of the early lame duck sessions. In 1954 only the Senate returned, and only to consider the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy. In 1998 only the House returned, for three days in December, and approved articles of impeachment against President Clinton. The 1974 session, held after the Nixon resignation, took up the Rockefeller nomination for Vice President.¹¹ Presidents have occasionally called Congress back in the middle of a recess, as Harry Truman did in 1947 and 1948, but those sessions began and ended before the November election and so were not lame duck sessions.¹¹

Pro forma sessions and the recess power

The Constitution says neither house may adjourn for more than three days without the other's consent. Each house therefore often meets every few days with no business, which the CRS calls a pro forma session.¹¹ The practice matters for the President's power to fill vacancies "during the Recess of the Senate." If the Senate meets in pro forma sessions across an election, no recess occurs for a President to act in, and pro forma sessions are also used to block pocket vetoes.¹¹

The Supreme Court tested the pro forma device in NLRB v. Noel Canning (2014). The Senate had passed a resolution on December 17, 2011, providing for pro forma sessions "with no business . . . transacted" every Tuesday and Friday through January 20, 2012, and the President made recess appointments on January 4, 2012. Justice Breyer wrote for the Court that "the Senate is in session when it says it is, provided that, under its own rules, it retains the capacity to transact Senate business." The pro forma sessions counted as sessions, so the President had acted during a three-day break. The Court added that a recess of more than three days but less than 10 days is "presumptively too short" to fall within the Clause, and it held the appointments invalid.¹² The Twentieth Amendment appears only in the background. Its rule that Congress meets every January 3 is part of what makes the calendar of recesses and sessions possible.

Does the amendment forbid lame duck lawmaking?

Often, when an outgoing Congress acts after an election, someone argues that the Twentieth Amendment forbids it. Professor Edward Larson of Pepperdine, writing for the National Constitution Center, collects two examples. In 1998 a Yale professor argued that the impeachment of President Clinton by a lame duck House violated the amendment's spirit. Twelve years later, the former Speaker who led that House made the same objection to legislation enacted by an outgoing Congress after the 2010 elections. Larson's answer is that "History shows that there is no basis to such claims."¹

His reasoning rests on the words of the supporters. Before 1933, "short session" and "lame duck session" were terms of art for the second regular session, which met after the next Congress was elected and had to end by March 4. Norris objected to the short session because it was too short "to do good work," not because it empowered defeated members. The Senate rejected an alternative that would have fixed a pre-election adjournment deadline, and Norris opposed it because it "substituted one type of short session for another." When Norris became a lame duck Senator himself in 1942, he voted in Senate meetings between the November elections and the end of his term in January 1943, because World War II made the work necessary.¹

None of the three reasons in the 1932 committee report, covered above, is a ban on meeting in November and December.¹ The concern behind reform was real all the same. Jeff Shesol, another contributor to the Center's discussion, describes it as the idea "that politicians who have been repudiated by voters can no longer be expected or trusted to represent those voters."¹ Larson reads the text as leaving post-election sessions open, and objectors read the same concern as a reason to keep them short. The Constitution Center page states that the amendment "has never been the subject of a Supreme Court decision and has rarely been interpreted by lower courts," and this lesson found no court ruling on the question. A reader should treat the lame duck question as one of political argument, not settled doctrine.

Section 3: When the President-Elect Is Missing

Sections 3 and 4 answer questions the Constitution had left open. What happens if the person chosen as President has died before the term begins? What if no one has been chosen at all? Section 3 gives three separate answers.⁴

First, if the President-elect dies before the beginning of the term, "the Vice President elect shall become President." The verb is "become," not "act." The Vice President-elect takes the office for the full term, not as a caretaker.⁴

Second, if "a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify," then the Vice President-elect "shall act as President until a President shall have qualified." Here the verb is "act." The Vice President-elect fills in, and the office stays open to a President who later qualifies.⁴ A President qualifies by meeting the constitutional requirements (a natural-born citizen, at least thirty-five years old, and fourteen years a resident of the United States, as Article II puts it) and by taking the oath.¹³

Third, if neither a President-elect nor a Vice President-elect has qualified, Congress "may by law" say who acts, "or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected." The text gives Congress that power and no one else. Congress used it in the Presidential Succession Act.¹⁴

The distinction between "become" and "act" repays attention, because the same pair of verbs appears in the Succession Act, which this lesson turns to next. It also marks the difference between a vacancy that is permanent and one that may end. A Vice President-elect who becomes President has no one to give the office back to. One who acts is holding the place until the missing person qualifies or until someone else does.

Larson's essay says the amendment's remaining sections "have never been used or were only used to ratify or implement it."¹ The country has so far not tested Section 3 with a President-elect who died or failed to qualify, as far as the sources checked here report. The amendment's drafters wanted the rule written down before any crisis, and so far none has called for it.

Section 3 and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment

Section 3 governs the moment of transition, from Election Day to noon on January 20. It does not cover a vacancy once a President has taken office. That later case belongs to the Twenty-Fifth Amendment (Module 38, The Twenty-Fifth Amendment), which provides for a Vice President to become President and for filling a vacancy in the vice presidency. The two amendments divide the work by time, and between them the Constitution now covers a President who is missing at any point after the electors have voted.

The Constitution Annotated points readers of Section 3 to the Twenty-Fifth Amendment for this reason.¹⁴ A student who confuses the two will go wrong on the first question that matters: whether the person in question had yet taken the oath of office. Before noon on January 20, Section 3 governs. After it, the Twenty-Fifth does.

Section 4 and the Presidential Succession Act

Section 3's third case, and Section 4's whole subject, belong to Congress. Section 4 lets Congress "provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President" when the right of choice has passed to the House, and likewise for a Vice President chosen by the Senate.⁴ Under the Twelfth Amendment, the House chooses among the top three presidential candidates and the Senate among the top two for Vice President (Module 26, The Twelfth Amendment). Section 4 reaches the case where one of those candidates dies while the contest is pending.⁴ The Constitution Annotated's page on Section 4 points to the same statute that its Section 3 page cites: the Presidential Succession Act, adopted in 1947, which put the Speaker of the House first in line, then the President pro tempore of the Senate, then the department heads.¹⁵

The Constitution Annotated gives two citations for the act. One page calls it the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, Pub. L. No. 80-199, 61 Stat. 380, codified as amended at 3 U.S.C. section 19. The other describes it as ch. 644, 62 Stat. 672, with the same codification.¹⁴¹⁵ The official code page for 3 U.S.C. section 19 cites the June 25, 1948 codification of Title 3, ch. 644, 62 Stat. 675.¹⁶ This lesson does not resolve the differences in the page citations. They appear to reflect the 1947 enactment and its 1948 inclusion in the code, but the sources checked do not say so.

The line of succession

Under section 19 as it stands, if there is neither a President nor a Vice President to discharge the powers and duties of the office, "by reason of death, resignation, removal from office, inability, or failure to qualify," the Speaker of the House acts as President, but only "upon his resignation as Speaker and as Representative in Congress." If there is no Speaker or the Speaker fails to qualify, the President pro tempore of the Senate acts, on the same condition. After them comes the list of Cabinet officers in the order their departments were created: State, Treasury, Defense, the Attorney General, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, Education, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security.¹⁶

Two features tie the statute back to the Twentieth Amendment. One is its express reach to a failure to qualify. Subsection (c)(1) provides that if the acting President serves "founded in whole or in part on the failure of both the President-elect and the Vice-President-elect to qualify," that person acts only until a President or Vice President qualifies. That is the Section 3 language, built into the statute.¹⁶ The other is eligibility. Subsection (e) limits the whole scheme to officers "eligible to the office of President under the Constitution," and Cabinet officers count only if they were confirmed by the Senate before the succession begins and are not under impeachment by the House at that time.¹⁶

The statute also sets the pay: while anyone acts as President under it, compensation is "at the rate then provided by law in the case of the President."¹⁶ The Speaker or Senate officer who steps in must give up a seat in Congress to do so, which makes the choice to act a serious personal one.

The January Count and the New Congress

Norris wanted a "new House of Representatives fresh from the people" to choose a President if an election was thrown into the House.¹ The calendar in Section 1 makes that possible. The Congress seated on January 3 is the one that meets in joint session to count the electoral votes, and it is the Congress that would carry out a contingent election under the Twelfth Amendment. The terms are arranged so that the body choosing is the body just elected, and the old House has no part in it.

The statute that runs the count is 3 U.S.C. section 15. In its present form it requires that "Congress shall be in session on the sixth day of January succeeding every meeting of the electors," that the two houses meet in the House chamber at one o'clock in the afternoon, and that the President of the Senate preside. The act that wrote this version is the Electoral Count Reform Act, enacted as part of Public Law 117-328 on December 29, 2022 (136 Stat. 5237), which "amended section generally."¹⁷

What the 2022 statute says

The statute limits the presiding officer's role. "Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, the role of the President of the Senate while presiding over the joint session shall be limited to performing solely ministerial duties." The President of the Senate "shall have no power to solely determine, accept, reject, or otherwise adjudicate or resolve disputes" over certificates, electors or votes.¹⁷ The Vice President who presides on January 6 is the sitting Vice President, whose own term runs to January 20 whatever the election outcome.

It also sets a threshold for objections. An objection must be in writing, must be "signed by at least one-fifth of the Senators duly chosen and sworn and one-fifth of the Members of the House of Representatives duly chosen and sworn," and must state one of two grounds: that the electors of a State "were not lawfully certified under a certificate of ascertainment," or that the vote of one or more electors "has not been regularly given." An objection is sustained only "by separate concurring votes of each House."¹⁷ Votes of electors who have been appointed under a certificate of ascertainment and "regularly given" may not be rejected.¹⁷

Congress and the date in Section 2

Section 2 lets Congress set a day other than January 3 for assembling "by law," and Congress has also used ordinary statutes to move the day of the count. The code's notes record that for the January 2013 count, Public Law 112-228 set the meeting for January 4 "rather than on the date specified in the first sentence of that section." Earlier laws moved it to January 8, 2009, and January 9, 1997.¹⁷ The notes show that Congress treats these dates as ones it may adjust by law, within the structure the Twentieth Amendment sets.

This lesson has described the statutory text only. The amendment did not create the count, which comes from Article II and the Twelfth Amendment, and the 2022 law does not amend the Constitution. Courts have not construed the new statute in the sources this lesson checked.

Sections 5 and 6: Ratification and the Seven-Year Clock

The Twentieth Amendment was proposed by Congress on March 2, 1932, and ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the States on January 23, 1933, when Missouri became the 36th State to approve it. Secretary of State Henry Stimson certified it on February 6, 1933.¹⁸¹⁹ The National Constitution Center essay says that all forty-eight States eventually ratified it by the end of the 1933 legislative sessions, making it "one of the few amendments to the Constitution ratified by all the states and the fastest to achieve that feat."¹ Florida was the last, on April 26, 1933.¹⁹

The race to the finish

Most legislatures were not in session when the proposal arrived. Virginia acted first, on March 4, 1932. By September 1932 seventeen States had ratified, and then the pace stopped, because most legislatures would not meet again until January. When they did, the Constitution Center essay reports, "it was a race to the finish": eighteen States ratified during the first three weeks of 1933, leaving the amendment one State short of the 36 it needed before Monday, January 23. Four States ratified that day and three more the next.¹¹⁹

The Center's essay and the Archives disagree on one date. The essay says that the amendment was sent to the States on March 8, 1932, while the National Archives lists it as passed by Congress on March 2, 1932, and the Constitution Annotated gives the House vote as March 1 and the Senate vote as March 2.¹⁴¹⁸ Virginia's listed ratification on March 4, 1932, which comes before March 8, fits the Archives and the Constitution Annotated better than it fits the essay. This lesson uses March 2 for passage and does not resolve what happened on March 8, which may be the date of formal transmission. It also notes that the Constitution Annotated page has an inconsistency of its own, because another page of the same text gives February 6, 1933, as the date of ratification, when February 6 was the date Stimson certified it.⁵¹⁸

Section 6 and the clock

Section 6 provides that the article "shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified ... within seven years from the date of its submission." The House added this section to the Senate's text on its own, and the conference committee accepted it.¹ The Twentieth Amendment put its deadline in its own text. The Constitution Annotated records that beginning with the 1917 proposal that became the Eighteenth Amendment, Congress has specified a seven-year deadline for every proposed amendment except the one that became the Nineteenth.²⁰ That is the rule the Twentieth followed.

Dillon v. Gloss

The Supreme Court upheld the practice in Dillon v. Gloss, 256 U.S. 368 (1921). The Court held that the Constitution implicitly allows Congress to "fix a definite period" for ratification, and it upheld the seven-year limit in the Eighteenth Amendment. Its reasoning was that Congress's power to choose the mode of ratification, by legislatures or by conventions, carries with it the incidental power to set a deadline.²⁰

Coleman v. Miller

Eighteen years later, in Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433 (1939), twenty-four members of the Kansas legislature challenged the way their state had handled the proposed Child Labor Amendment. The Court indicated that two questions, whether a State may ratify after rejecting and whether it may rescind a ratification, were political questions for Congress to resolve. Chief Justice Hughes also wrote that Congress, in "promulgating" an amendment's adoption, could decide whether ratification came within a reasonable time. Commentators have since doubted that, and a 2020 opinion of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel said the Constitution gives Congress no such role.²⁰²¹

Idaho v. Freeman

Idaho produced the leading modern decision on these questions. Idaho was one of five States that passed rescission legislation between 1973 and 1978 for the Equal Rights Amendment, and the State went to federal court over Congress's extension of that amendment's seven-year deadline. In Idaho v. Freeman, 529 F. Supp. 1107 (D. Idaho 1981), the district court wrote that "Until the technical three-fourths has been reached, a rescission of a prior ratification is clearly a proper exercise of a state's power granted by the article V phrase 'when ratified.'"²¹ A Congressional Research Service summary adds that the court reasoned that Congress could not change the deadline once it was set in 1972.²² The Supreme Court vacated the decision as moot in NOW, Inc. v. Idaho, 459 U.S. 809 (1982), after the extension period had passed.²¹²² The Constitution Annotated cites the case as showing that the questions remain unresolved, and a vacated opinion binds no one. The Twentieth Amendment itself drew no such dispute, because all forty-eight States ratified.

The Constitution Annotated adds two more points. If Congress sets no deadline, limited historical practice suggests that an amendment stays pending: the Twenty-Seventh became part of the Constitution more than 202 years after it was proposed.²⁰ And in 2020 the Office of Legal Counsel advised that Congress lacks the authority to extend a ratification deadline for an amendment pending before the States, or to revive an amendment whose deadline has expired, without restarting the process.²⁰ Each point rests on the same text of Article V as the Twentieth Amendment's Section 6.

Myths and Misreadings

Questions Students Ask

Why does the amendment have six sections for such a plain change?

Sections 1 and 2 changed the calendar. Sections 3 and 4 deal with a missing President-elect and with the death of a candidate in a contingent election. Sections 5 and 6 set the amendment's own start date and ratification deadline.⁴

Is there a lame duck President today?

Yes, in the ordinary sense. The CRS says the term applies to a President "after the President's successor has been elected and also whenever the President is known not to be a candidate for reelection."¹¹

Has the Supreme Court ever decided a Twentieth Amendment case?

The Constitution Center essay says the amendment "has never been the subject of a Supreme Court decision and has rarely been interpreted by lower courts."¹ The cases in this lesson are about ratification deadlines and the recess power. They bear on the Twentieth Amendment's setting but do not construe its text.

Could a new amendment shorten the transition further?

Shesol reports that in the mid-1980s Senators Claiborne Pell and Charles Mathias introduced an amendment to move Inauguration Day to November 20 and the swearing-in of the new Congress to November 15. It failed, and Shesol expects any future attempt to fail "absent a crisis so severe" that Congress and the States act together.¹

Why does a defeated member of Congress still vote after November?

Because the member's term has not ended. Under Section 1 it ends at noon on January 3.⁴ The vote of a member who lost in November counts the same as any other until then.

Landmark Cases

The Twentieth Amendment has no Supreme Court decision of its own. These cases construe the rules around it: how long States have to ratify, who decides whether a ratification counts, and how the Senate's recess calendar works.

The Idaho Connection

Idaho ratified on January 21, 1933

The Idaho Legislature ratified the Twentieth Amendment on January 21, 1933, according to the ratification list on Wikipedia. The Idaho Legislature's own online session laws, as far as this lesson could find, begin with volumes from 1945, so the 1933 joint resolution and its roll call could not be checked at the source. This lesson could not confirm Idaho's vote count. Treat the date as secondhand and verify it in the 1933 Idaho Session Laws or the legislative journals.¹⁹

The timing places Idaho in the final surge. Seventeen States had ratified by September 1932. Then eighteen acted in January 1933, from California on January 4 to New Mexico on January 21, and Idaho was one of them, listed 34th. Missouri completed the process two days later.¹⁹¹ By the Wikipedia list, Idaho and New Mexico acted on the same day, so their order that day is not fixed by the sources checked.

Idaho's own calendar

Idaho's Constitution runs its own transition calendar, and it differs from the federal one in instructive ways.

State executive officers (the governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, state controller, state treasurer, attorney general and superintendent of public instruction) each hold office "for four years beginning on the first Monday in January next after his election."²³ Federal terms end at noon on a fixed date, January 20. Idaho's begin on a day defined by the weekday, the first Monday in January, so the date moves from year to year.

Legislators work on a different clock. Idaho senators and representatives "shall be elected for the term of two years, from and after the first day of December next following the general election."²⁴ Their terms start about four weeks after the November election, where the federal Twentieth Amendment waits until January 3. Idaho's Article III, section 8 then sets three kinds of meetings: regular sessions "commencing on the second Monday of January of each year, unless a different day shall have been appointed by law," extraordinary sessions "when convened by the governor," and "organizational sessions commencing on the first Thursday of December after the general election."²⁵ The December organizational session is the Idaho counterpart of the new Congress's January 3 start: the members elected in November meet, organize and choose their leaders before the regular session opens.

The same section lets the legislature call itself into special session, on a petition of at least sixty percent of the membership of each house, with a limit of fifteen days to commence and a restriction to the subjects listed in the petition.²⁵ Section 2 of the federal amendment lets Congress set a different day "by law," and the Idaho text carries nearly the same flexibility in the phrase "unless a different day shall have been appointed by law."

Idaho's succession clauses

Sections 3 and 4 of the federal amendment have a state analogue in Article IV, sections 12 to 14. If the governor fails to qualify, is impeached or convicted, dies, is removed, resigns, is absent from the state or is unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office, those powers "shall devolve upon the lieutenant governor."²⁶ If both the governor and the lieutenant governor are out, "the duties of the governor shall devolve upon the president of the senate pro tempore," and if that officer is also incapable, "the same shall devolve upon the speaker of the house."²⁷ Idaho's constitution thus writes the legislative leaders into the line of succession directly. The federal line, by contrast, is a statute (3 U.S.C. section 19) that Congress can amend.¹⁶

Section 12's mention of "absence from the state" is an unusual trigger. Under the text, the lieutenant governor exercises the governor's powers whenever the governor is out of the state, so the lieutenant governor holds the governor's powers during any such absence.²⁶

Electors and the federal count

Idaho's Title 34, chapter 15 governs presidential electors. Section 34-1504 requires each elector to give notice to the governor, before noon on the day before the electors' meeting, that he is at the seat of government and ready, and it provides that if an elector fails to appear before nine in the morning of the day of election, the electors present fill the vacancy "by ballot, in the presence of the governor."²⁸ Idaho had four electoral votes in 2024.²⁹ Those votes arrive at the January 6 count in Congress described above, under the Electoral Count Reform Act's rules for certificates of ascertainment.¹⁷

Idaho cases

This lesson found no reported Idaho appellate decision interpreting the Twentieth Amendment, and the search was limited to the sources listed below. The principal Idaho case on the amendment's neighbors is Idaho v. Freeman (Section 6 and Article V questions), covered above. The Idaho Legislature's lawmaking calendar rests on the Idaho Constitution rather than on the federal amendment, because the federal rule governs the Congress.

Where This Shows Up for Officials, Reporters and Citizens

The county clerk and the January calendar

A clerk preparing for the federal count should know the dates. The electors meet in December. Congress counts on January 6 unless a statute for that year moves the day, and the code's notes list the years Congress did exactly that.¹⁷ The new Congress takes its seats at noon on January 3, so a Representative-elect is not a Representative until then.⁴ At the state level, Idaho executives take office on the first Monday in January and legislators on December 1, and a clerk who mixes these up can mislabel a term.²³²⁴

The reporter facing a "lame duck" headline

A claim that a post-election vote "violates the Twentieth Amendment" does not match the text. The reporter can check it against the three reasons in the 1932 committee report and against Larson's essay, then say what the amendment did: end the short session and set January dates. What the amendment did was shorten the interval and end the short session. A lawmaker who objects to a post-election vote is making a political argument, not quoting the text.¹ For counts, the CRS report gives the numbers: 25 lame duck sessions since 1935.¹¹

The staff member asked who is in charge

Before noon on January 20, the outgoing President is still President, whatever an incoming team says, and the winner is the "President-elect" and has no constitutional authority yet. That is the point of Section 1, and Shesol describes the gap as a problem the amendment shortened from sixteen weeks to ten, not one it removed.¹ Staff in either administration should expect a ten-week period in which the old government governs and the new one prepares.

The agency planning for continuity

A federal planning officer should read 3 U.S.C. section 19. It lists the Speaker, the President pro tempore and fifteen Cabinet officers in order, and it requires the Speaker and the Senate officer to resign their seats before acting.¹⁶ An Idaho state agency should read Article IV, sections 12 to 14, which name the lieutenant governor, the president pro tempore and the Speaker.²⁶²⁷

The citizen reading an old source

A letter or article from before 1933 that refers to "the March inauguration" or to the "short session" is using the old calendar, and its dates cannot be mapped directly onto today's. The rules in this lesson explain what changed.¹

Related Modules

Module 2, Article I: Congress (the original Article I, section 4 meeting clause that Section 2 replaced); Module 3, Article II: The President (terms, qualifications and the electors); Module 6, Amending the Constitution (the ratification questions in Section 6); Module 26, The Twelfth Amendment (contingent elections and the 1800 tie); Module 38, The Twenty-Fifth Amendment (vacancy after inauguration); and the full course on the 17th Amendment, whose six-year Senate terms the Twentieth Amendment's 1935 transition temporarily shortened.

Sources & Further Reading

Primary Sources

• National Archives, The Constitution: Amendments 11-27 (text of Amendments XII, XVIII and XX)
• National Archives, The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription
• National Archives, Tally of Electoral Votes for the 1800 Presidential Election
• National Archives, 1932 Electoral College Results
• National Archives, 1936 Electoral College Results
• National Archives, 2024 Electoral College Results
• 3 U.S.C. section 15, Counting electoral votes in Congress
• 3 U.S.C. section 19, Vacancy in offices of both President and Vice President
• Federal Judicial Center, Landmark Legislation: Judiciary Act of 1801
• Constitution Annotated, Amendment XX (Cornell LII edition)
• Constitution Annotated, Article V: Congressional Deadlines for Ratification
• Constitution Annotated, Article V: Effect of Prior Rejection or Rescission

Supreme Court and Federal Opinions

• Dillon v. Gloss, 256 U.S. 368 (1921)
• Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433 (1939)
• NLRB v. Noel Canning, 573 U.S. 513 (2014)

Secondary Sources and Further Reading

• National Constitution Center, Interpretation: The Twentieth Amendment (Larson and Shesol)
• Congressional Research Service, Lame Duck Sessions of Congress, 1935-2024 (R45154)
• Congressional Research Service, The Equal Rights Amendment: Recent Developments (LSB10731)
• Hoover Presidential Library, The 20th Amendment: the obscure amendment that changed Inauguration Day
• Reagan Library Education Blog, Amendment XX
• Wikipedia, Twentieth Amendment (State ratification dates; secondary)

Idaho Law

• Idaho Const. art. III, section 3 (legislators' term)
• Idaho Const. art. III, section 8 (sessions of the legislature)
• Idaho Const. art. IV, section 1 (executive officers and terms)
• Idaho Const. art. IV, section 12 (lieutenant governor to act as governor)
• Idaho Const. art. IV, section 14 (president pro tempore to act as governor)
• Idaho Code section 34-1504 (presidential electors: notice and vacancies)

Related Training Modules

• Module 2: Article I: Congress
• Module 3: Article II: The President
• Module 6: Amending the Constitution
• Module 26: The Twelfth Amendment
• Module 38: The Twenty-Fifth Amendment
• Course index: The United States Constitution

Footnotes

1. Edward J. Larson, "Common Interpretation," "The Constitutionality of Lame Duck Lawmaking," and Jeff Shesol, "One President at a Time: Tightening the Presidential Transition," in National Constitution Center, Interpretation: The Twentieth Amendment, https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-xx/interpretations/153. Source for the Confederation Congress resolution, the 1922 ship subsidy episode, the Norris history, the House vote of 336 to 56 on February 16, 1932, the ratification race of January 1933, the Lincoln, Hoover, Truman and Roosevelt anecdotes, and the 1998 and 2010 lame duck objections. One essay on the page states that the amendment was "Ratified in 1935" and another gives 1933; this lesson follows 1933.
2. National Archives, Tally of Electoral Votes for the 1800 Presidential Election, https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/1800-election/1800-election.html. States that Jefferson and Burr each received 73 votes, that the lame duck Federalist House cast thirty-five ballots over five days, and that on February 17, 1801, on the thirty-sixth ballot, it elected Jefferson.
3. Federal Judicial Center, Landmark Legislation: Judiciary Act of 1801 (February 13, 1801), https://www.fjc.gov/history/legislation/judiciary-act-1801. Source for the cut from six Justices to five, the sixteen new judgeships for six circuits, the "Midnight Judges" label, and the Federalist and Republican positions in the debate.
4. National Archives, The Constitution: Amendments 11-27, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/amendments-11-27. Gives the full text of Amendment XX and the notes "Passed by Congress March 2, 1932. Ratified January 23, 1933," and that Article I, section 4 was modified by Section 2 and part of the Twelfth Amendment superseded by Section 3. The same page carries the Twelfth and Eighteenth Amendments cited in this lesson.
5. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XX, Presidential and Congressional Terms (Cornell LII edition), https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-20/presidential-and-congressional-terms. Source for the shortening of the 1932 and later terms and the temporary modification of Article I, section 2 and the Seventeenth Amendment. The same page refers to a "February 6, 1933 ratification," a date that the ratification page identifies as the date of certification.
6. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XX, Effective Date of Sections 1 and 2 of Twentieth Amendment, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-20/effective-date-of-sections-1-and-2-of-twentieth-amendment. Section 5 and the October 15 effective date following the January 23, 1933 ratification.
7. Spencer Howard, "The 20th Amendment: the obscure amendment that changed Inauguration Day," Hoover Presidential Library blog, February 24, 2021, https://hoover.blogs.archives.gov/2021/02/24/the-20th-amendment-the-obscure-amendment-that-changed-inauguration-day/. Source for the thirteen-month wait of the old calendar, the first Congress seated on January 3, 1935, the first inauguration on the new date in January 1937, and Florida as the 48th State on April 26, 1933.
8. National Archives, 1936 Electoral College Results, https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/1936. Roosevelt 523, Landon 8. The 1932 page, https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/1932, gives Roosevelt 472 and Hoover 59.
9. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XX, Date When Congress Shall Meet, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-20/date-when-congress-shall-meet. Section 2 superseded Article I, section 4, clause 2.
10. Reagan Library Education Blog, "Constitutional Amendments Series: Amendment XX," October 3, 2022, https://reagan.blogs.archives.gov/2022/10/03/constitutional-amendments-series-amendment-xx-date-changes-for-presidency-congress-and-succession. Source for the 1792 window and the 1845 uniform Election Day.
11. Congressional Research Service, Lame Duck Sessions of Congress, 1935-2024 (74th-118th Congresses), R45154, updated September 15, 2026, https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/2026-09-15_R45154_01386c19178ada6a70755a115b527bcb228d500c.html. Source for the definition, the 25 sessions since 1935, 12 of 32 Congresses from 1935 to 1998 and every Congress since the 106th, the 49 appropriations acts and 26 continuing resolutions, the five routes into a lame duck session, and the 1940, 1954, 1974 and 1998 episodes.
12. NLRB v. Noel Canning, 573 U.S. 513 (2014), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/12-1281. The Court affirmed the D.C. Circuit; the quoted holding, the December 17, 2011 resolution, the January 4, 2012 appointments and the 10-day presumption are in the syllabus and opinion of the Court.
13. National Archives, The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript. Article II, section 1 (age, citizenship, residency and oath).
14. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XX, Presidential Succession, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-20/presidential-succession. Section 3 and the Presidential Succession Act (the page cites ch. 644, 62 Stat. 672, 3 U.S.C. section 19), with a pointer to the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.
15. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XX, Congress's Power to Provide Further for Presidential Succession, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-20/congresss-power-to-provide-further-for-presidential-succession. Section 4 and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, Pub. L. No. 80-199, 61 Stat. 380 (codified as amended at 3 U.S.C. section 19).
16. 3 U.S.C. section 19, Vacancy in offices of both President and Vice President; officers eligible to act (Cornell LII), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/3/19. Source for the order of succession, the resignation requirement, subsection (c)(1), subsection (e), subsection (f), and the code citation June 25, 1948, ch. 644, 62 Stat. 675.
17. 3 U.S.C. section 15, Counting electoral votes in Congress (Cornell LII), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/3/15. Text as amended generally by Pub. L. 117-328, div. P, title I, section 109(a), Dec. 29, 2022, 136 Stat. 5237, and the statutory notes on the 1997, 2009 and 2013 changes to the date of the count.
18. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XX, Ratification of Twentieth Amendment, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-20/ratification-of-twentieth-amendment. Proposed March 2, 1932, when it passed the Senate (the House having passed it on March 1); official citation 47 Stat. 745; ratification completed January 23, 1933; certified by Secretary of State Stimson on February 6, 1933.
19. "Twentieth Amendment to the United States Constitution," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twentieth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution. Used only for the State-by-State ratification dates (Virginia March 4, 1932; Idaho January 21, 1933; Missouri January 23, 1933; Florida April 26, 1933). A secondary source; this lesson did not confirm individual dates against State records.
20. Constitution Annotated, Article V, Congressional Deadlines for Ratification of an Amendment, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-5/congressional-deadlines-for-ratification-of-an-amendment. Dillon v. Gloss, 256 U.S. 368, 375-76 (1921); Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, 453-56 (1939); the seven-year practice from 1917; the Twenty-Seventh Amendment; and the 2020 Office of Legal Counsel opinion, 44 Op. O.L.C. 1.
21. Constitution Annotated, Article V, Effect of Prior Rejection of an Amendment or Rescission of Ratification, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-5/effect-of-prior-rejection-of-an-amendment-or-rescission-of-ratification. Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433 (1939); Idaho v. Freeman, 529 F. Supp. 1107, 1150 (D. Idaho 1981), vacated as moot, NOW, Inc. v. Idaho, 459 U.S. 809 (1982). This lesson did not open the district court opinion itself.
22. Congressional Research Service, The Equal Rights Amendment: Recent Developments, LSB10731, https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/LSB10731.html. Five States passed rescission legislation between 1973 and 1978, including Idaho; the Idaho district court reasoned that a deadline set in 1972 could not be changed; the Supreme Court vacated the decision as moot. The summary does not name NOW, Inc. v. Idaho, which is taken from the Constitution Annotated.
23. Idaho Constitution, art. IV, section 1, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ArtIV/Sect1/. Executive officers hold office "for four years beginning on the first Monday in January next after his election."
24. Idaho Constitution, art. III, section 3, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ArtIII/Sect3/. Legislators' two-year term runs "from and after the first day of December next following the general election."
25. Idaho Constitution, art. III, section 8, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ArtIII/Sect8/. Regular, extraordinary, organizational and special sessions; text current on the Idaho Legislature website as of this lesson.
26. Idaho Constitution, art. IV, section 12, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ArtIV/Sect12/. The lieutenant governor acts as governor.
27. Idaho Constitution, art. IV, section 14, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ArtIV/Sect14/. President pro tempore of the Senate, then the Speaker of the House.
28. Idaho Code section 34-1504, Notice to governor; vacancies, how filled, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/Title34/T34CH15/SECT34-1504/. Part of Title 34, chapter 15, Presidential Electors.
29. National Archives, 2024 Electoral College Results, https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/2024. Idaho: 4 electoral votes.