It'll be called Time Zone, or maybe Twentieth Amendment, and it will revolve around the provision that "The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January." An international incident on inauguration day triggers a constitutional crisis revolving around the fact that the Amendment doesn't tell us what time zone will be the reference point. The old President decides that when the new President is appointed in the Eastern zone, the old President remains in charge in Central and points west, and then his power only ebbs hour by hour rather than vanishing altogether at noon Eastern. High drama ensues. Military forces from different time zones have a tense standoff. The Florida and Kentucky militias skirmish across the time line. Eventually the old President is reduced to staying in a bunker in the Aleut Islands, commanding the tiny remnants of the nation that he has left. It'll sell millions, I tell you, millions.
Great Idea for a New Legal-Political Thriller:
actually that's probably a good argument for using GMT instead of EST for the inauguration.
I'm not sure that does it. The clause has "the 20th day of January," which is the twentieth day regardless of what you call it. (You could suppose the Congress renamed the days of January after colors, or sold naming rights to days, as naming rights to years are sold in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: So you could have The Purple of January (still the 20th day) or whatever.) What you need for your scenario to play out is for the month of January to be renamed.
In any case the eastern seaboard would be a burning wreck as the waning administration has control of the ICBMs and B-2 Spirits in the Midwest.
"The President could head out to American Samoa (UTC-11) even after his power in the Aleutians is gone."
There's always the nuclear option. Maybe someday President Gore will be forced to such measures to save our beloved planet.
The military base rule appears to be that jurisdiction rests where the wrongdoer lands in America.
Side note: Has anyone ever read the book about the US Berlin Court? It only heard one case, a highjacked airliner, and they signed up a US District Judge who ended up being disloyal to the US goals in setting up the court.
Sects and violins always sell better. You'll make dozens of dollars.
C.J. Box's novel Free Fire could be in this series as well (together with Volokh's proposed time zone thriller). Free Fire is based on Brian Kalt's discovery that the Sixth Amendment's interaction with certain venue statutes allows anyone to commit a crime in certain areas of the United States without being prosecuted.
But you could work that into the manuscript for the story. Those briefings might provide an avenue to introduce a president elect to like minded military, setting the stage for your split.
My polite suggestion is that you not give up your day job.
One highly unrealistic assumption your proposal makes is that the military (or anyone else for that matter) will continue to follow the outgoing President and obeys his orders as he hops from time zone to time zone.
Heck, all it will take is one Air Force Lieutenant Colonel (the pilot of Air Force One) to thwart the plot completely.
I'm not sure it is accurate to use the term "disloyal", when what he did was say that just because he was appointed by the State Dept. didn't mean they got to tell him how to rule.
Easy. Under the new Freedom Calendar, January only has 19 days.
Your idea is definitely worth millions of Zimbabwean dollars.
On your story idea, here's the problem. If the story has a Democrat on the way in and a Republican on the way out, Hollywood would have the Republican President refusing to give up the office and it would soon be found out that it was a ploy by the Republican President, along with the VP (certainly a Dick Cheney look-alike, see e.g The Day After Tomorrow), a Haliburon-like company, the KKK, the CIA, and the Mormons all in on it. At the beginning, you are meant to think that a Muslim terrorist plot, and a Muslim gets waterboarded. Later we discover it is really an attempt to silence a staunch Muslim critic of Prop 8 in California.
If it was a Republican coming into office, add all of the above co-conspirators, the gay Muslim subplot, and the revelation that a major Hailburton lease on oil wells expires at noon on January 20th and the Republican must come into office so he can extend the 99 year option, which will lead to global warming and the end of the polar bear in 3 weeks unless the Republican is stopped.
Of course, Nicholas Cage will have to star.
You are right about the plot. On a technical note, Nicolas Cage does not have an "h" in his name.
I think he should play the incoming President, leapfrogging past the outgoing President so that eventually they can recreate Harrison Ford's famous final scene on the movie, Air Force One--including Ford's line, "Get off my plane."
I'm not sure that does it. The clause has "the 20th day of January," which is the twentieth day regardless of what you call it. (You could suppose the Congress renamed the days of January after colors, or sold naming rights to days, as naming rights to years are sold in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: So you could have The Purple of January (still the 20th day) or whatever.) What you need for your scenario to play out is for the month of January to be renamed."
Even better then, Congress uses the same authority to shorten January to 19 days. Then it's an ironclad calendar coup, subject only to an "original public meaning of the 20th amendment" challenge by the hero lawyer Randy Barnett, who will have to be silenced as part of the (other) conspiracy.
A President (-ial nominee, -elect, or even ex-) is actually not a citizen - unknown to anyone, even possibly himself. He was actually foreign-born: brought into the U.S. in a secret adoption by a man who needed a supposed child to conceal his homosexuality. The nominal father then died a few years later, the nominal mother disappeared, and the child was fostered by his supposed relatives, who knew nothing of the scam.
Many years later, the secret comes out somehow. (The father's aaaociates may still be around, or perhaps something in their old letters or diaries is revelatory.) The President volunteers his DNA for a bone-marrow donor scan, perhaps, and there is, somehow, a "hit" (and also a miss with his supposed famliy).
Political or Constitutional crisis?
I think Eugene should do it if he likes. There are literally hundreds of dollars to be made in novel writing.
And, yes, there was a book on the United States District Court for the District of Berlin. I forget the title, though I think it was "Judgment in Berlin," and I think Judge Stern may have written it.
Congress could just say January only has 19 days...
Not true, the Army uses a 24 hour clock, but local time and Navy ships reset their clocks at midnight to allow for time differences as they sail east or west. So we could have the Army on one side using Patriot missiles to shoot down Air Force F-117s on the other. (Being fiction, we can ignore real weapons capabilities).
It's like the old story at the end of the briefing for a Joint Operation when it comes time to synchronize watches. The briefing officer announces, "For you soldiers, when I say hack, it will be 1400 hours, for you guys in the Air Force, it will be 2100Z, for sailors, it will be four bells, and for you Marines it will be big hand on 12, little hand on 2."
But does that let the new guy take office then, or does he need the "twentieth day of January"? If the latter, you'll have the Speaker of the House trying to step up, with all the cans of worms that opens.
In that case, since we are splitting hairs, what happens when the (outgoing) Pres flies over Kitibati on his way to American Samoa? Kiribati is the 'other side of the date-line' and already the next day. He becomes the ex-Pres instantly because it will have become after noon at that instant. (Snap quiz for the day: what tense is 'will have become'? Illustrate by translating into Latin or French).
Unless you wish to argue that Presidential powers are express trust, of which the President is both trustee *and* beneficiary. Then it might be arguable that once originally assumed at Inauguration they are capable of re-assumption, like a springing devise. (Cf, the section 3 of the 25th Amendment, which implicitly assumes a springing power).
Myself, I would argue that the outgoing Pres has a usufructory right to continue to issue orders until noon in the timezone where he is.
I can imagine the scene in the movie version where the gripping arguments are made. Barnett and Larry Tribe as themselves and Jack Nicholson (again) as outgoing White House chief of staff. "You can't handle the truth". It writes itself...got ALL the buttons: power, conflict, springing devise, usufruct. It'll make millions... of lawyers and law students look up 'usufruct'....
We could call it "The Comma Caper." ;^)
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