Fordham Law Review Volume 89 Issue 1 Article 6 2020 THE TWENTY-FIFTH AMENDMENT—IN THE WORDS OF BIRCH BAYH, ITS PRINCIPAL John D. Feerick Dean Emeritus, Sidney C. Norris Chair of Law in Public Service, and Founder and Senior Counsel, Feerick Center for Social Justice, Fordham University School of Law. Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation John D. Feerick, THE TWENTY-FIFTH AMENDMENT—IN THE WORDS OF BIRCH BAYH, ITS PRINCIPAL, 89 Fordham L. Rev. 31 (2020). Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol89/iss1/6 This Symposium is brought to you for free and open access by FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fordham Law Review by an authorized editor of FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. THE TWENTY-FIFTH AMENDMENT—IN THE WORDS OF BIRCH BAYH, ITS PRINCIPAL AUTHOR John D. Feerick* INTRODUCTION Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana began the first of his three terms in the U.S. Senate on January 3, 1963.1 Less than a year later, the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, of which he was the new chairman following the death of Senator Estes Kefauver,2 had the opportunity to continue to find a solution to the problem of presidential inability. As Senator Kenneth Keating of New York, a subcommittee member at the time, said, “As distasteful as it is to entertain the thought, a matter of inches spelled the difference between the painless death of John F.