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Wednesday, January 24, 2024
The Constitutional Eligibility of Vice President Cheney
In 2000, a federal lawsuit was brought by voters alleging that Dick Cheney was ineligible to be Vice President. The argument was that Cheney lived in Texas and was thus barred from the Vice Presidency by the Twelfth Amendment because George W. Bush also lived in Texas. In Jones v. Bush, the Federal District Court held that the voters lacked Article III standing and that Cheney was, in fact, a resident of Wyoming. The Fifth Circuit affirmed in a ruling from the bench that said in part that Cheney was a Wyoming resident and thus eligible.
Note that neither court said that the constitutional eligibility of the Vice President was a political question for the Joint Session of Congress. Nor was there any Act of Congress that gave the courts authority to adjudicate the case. The Twelfth Amendment was treated as self-executing.
Posted by Gerard Magliocca on January 24, 2024 at 10:29 AM | Permalink
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