Last month in this thread,
TremblingBluStar and I had a lively and interesting debate about whether Magneto's plan in the
X-Men film made sense: if he had succeeded in turning the world's political leaders into mutants (or rather, mutates), would that have resulted in their removal from office, or would it have had no effect on their legal eligibility? I thought this would be an interesting topic for the folks at the excellent
Law and the Multiverse blog, which examines legal questions in superhero fiction. And I'm pleased to report that they agreed, and
their post on the topic is now up.
They suggest four possible ways a sitting president could be removed from office. The first is impeachment, and they have this to say:
On the one hand, it’s unlikely that being a mutant would qualify as a “high crime or misdemeanor.” The phrase is misleading to modern ears, and it encompasses more than just criminal acts and includes maladministration and subversion of the Constitution. But even these broader terms require some kind of overt act or omission; simply existing as a mutant wouldn’t seem to qualify. On the other hand, no one is perfect, and some trumped-up charge could probably be dug up. ...
The major downside of the impeachment route is that it’s still a trial, and since the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court would preside over the case, it’s unlikely that Congress could make a complete mockery of the proceedings. The President would have the opportunity to present evidence and call witnesses, which buys a lot of time for building public support against removal.
Second is invoking the 25th Amendment, and this one's rather interesting and a bit alarming:
The way the process works is that the Vice President and the majority of the Cabinet transmit a written declaration of the President’s disability to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House. This makes the Vice President the acting President. The President can then challenge this declaration. Ultimately, Congress decides the issue: if two-thirds of both houses vote that the President is indeed disabled, then the VP remains acting President.
This basically means the vice president can effectively stage a coup, providing he or she has the support of the majority of Congress and the Cabinet. The L&tM folks add:
The downside is that it requires a majority of the Cabinet, who presumably are fans of the President, and two-thirds of both houses, which is a higher bar than impeachment. And it’s probably still pretty difficult to sell mutant status as such a disability that the President couldn’t discharge his or her duties, although some mutations come close, particularly dangerous, uncontrolled ones.
The third method is passing a law to add a new qualification for the presidency, e.g. that you have to be human and free of the mutant X gene. This is the most unlikely option, because:
...
Powell v. McCormack and
U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995) suggest that the qualifications to be President, like those for federal legislators, are constitutionally fixed and cannot be altered by Congress or the states (except by amendment).
Besides, the President would assuredly veto the bill, and overriding it would require a two-thirds vote in both houses.
The fourth option is a Constitutional amendment banning mutants from being POTUS, but that would require overwhelming popular support for anti-mutant policies, since an amendment requires a 2/3 supermajority in Congress before it's even put to the states, and a 75% "super super majority" of the states in order to be ratified. And I imagine that would be a very lengthy and contentious process.
So it sounds like the answer is somewhere between TBS's position and mine. Removal of the President for being a mutant/mutate is could theoretically be done, but it would be far from easy to achieve it, and certainly not automatic or inevitable. The law and the Constitution make it quite difficult, but if there were really, really strong support in the government and the public for the removal of a mutated president, and if the president were unable to rally enough support to counter it, then it could happen. The most likely route would probably be impeachment on some other, trumped-up charge (like, say, lying under oath about an affair), so the president wouldn't technically be removed for being mutated, but that would be the underlying motive. The 25th Amendment route would be the second-most likely, I'd say. Normally the Cabinet would be unlikely to turn on the president who appointed them, but if enough of them were anti-mutant, they might abandon him/her after such a transformation.
So I guess it ultimately comes down to how powerful the anti-mutant sentiment is among the people and the government -- and probably somewhat to the specific nature of the president's mutation. If it were something physically frightening or disturbing, or overtly dangerous, that would increase the odds of the POTUS's removal. But if it were a subtler, more inward mutation, that probably wouldn't scare off enough people to pass the very high threshold for removal. (And of course it could always be a mutation that made the POTUS even more appealing, like pheromones or a hypnotic voice or something. Then it would be easy for the president to hold onto the office.)
