Per the 20th amendment[1], the new president's term begins immediately after the old president's term ends. This means that Obama became president at 12:00, even without being sworn in. He couldn't "enter on the execution of his office" until he was sworn in, but he was nonetheless president.

[1] http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am20

The argument is that Rice was president due to the succession laws. I understand that this succession does not require swearing in. Then, as soon as Biden did swear in, at 12:01, he became acting President.

(6) Neither Nancy Pelosi nor Robert Byrd actually resigned their seats in the Congress. Thus, neither of them qualified to become Acting President under the Presidential Succession Act. Plus, interbranch appointments might be unconstitutional anyhow. See Akhil Reed Amar and Vikram David Amar, Is the Presidential Succession Law Constitutional?, 48 Stan. L. Rev. 113 (1995); but see Howard Wasserman, Structural Principles and Presidential Succession, 90 Ky. L.J. 345 (2002).

furthermore, to the parent comment:

I suppose the obvious counterargument is that Secretary Rice also never took the Oath prescribed in Art. II, Sec. 1, cl. 8, and thus was no more qualified than Barack Obama or Joe Biden to act as President at 12:00 noon. But if Secretary Rice was not President from noon to 12:01, then who was?

Verdict: today is an interesting meatspace reminder to check your edge cases.

Actually, it's also a reminder that, like plentyoffish, a working system can ignore edge cases and be incredibly successful for unrelated reasons, and only a few people will complain about the failure at the edge. :)

Here's a better debunking than I can give myself:

http://yazilikaya.blogspot.com/2009/01/first-legal-wrangling...

But many have noted that his legitimacy is not really in question because he officially became President Obama (pause to savor that...) at noon, and the oath is just a formality. Amendment XX apparently confirms this:

The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January . . . and the terms of their successors shall then begin.

From a practical standpoint, Amendment XX might have functionally eliminated the oath requirement since it is not really possible to separate being president and executing the office of president, and the amendment is very clear that there are no obstacles to taking office after noon on 1/20. That's my interpretation -- I think if this were ever seriously challenged in court, the elimination of the oath as a Constitutional requirement would be the result.

Also, the VP's oath is only mandated by statute. ALSO, because of Amendment XX, and contra Katie Couric, Biden was not president for five minutes today.

On what grounds is it "ridiculous"? The cited article quotes a professor of constitutional law, your linked article is from a random blogger (who seems remarkably confident about what he "thinks" would happen if it were ever challenged in court). At first glance, both interpretations seem plausible.

1) Did not happen, Obama was chosen (President Elect) weeks ago. 2) Did not happen, Obama was at no point refused the Presidency between his election and his inauguration. Consequently 3) did not happen.

Anyway, if Obama was not president because he had not been sworn in then nobody else was for the same reason, and if you follow the argument in the blog then you get to "the {XYZ Position} shall act as President". Acting as president is not being president anymore than acting as a Spaniard makes you a Spaniard.

Also, if you read "Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following oath. . . ” without any surrounding context then it's vague. There is no office of President-Elect, Barack Obama has no office, so it could read:

Before he [The President] enter on the Execution of his Office...

As in, someone has to be President before being able to take oath and execute the office of President. Similar (in my layman's terms) to how ex-presidents retain the title of President without executing the office of president.

But if Secretary Rice was not President from noon to 12:01, then who was?

If you guys had a constitution written in Haskell you could have a "maybe nobody" president and it could be lazily-evaluated so this question would never be explored until it was really needed.

The cited article quotes a professor of constitutional law Fallacy of "proof by appeal to authority" alert.

Wow, you just seamlessly combined constitutional law geekery with computer science geekery in a way that actually made sense. I wonder if this has ever been accomplished before now.

I also wonder what President Obama himself makes of all this, given that he IS a constitutional law scholar. This is a good reason to give the man his Blackberry back, so he can directly weigh in on important questions like this.

Make a great Kung Fu/Ninja/Steven Seagal movie. I'd probably watch it. If I were drunk and left in a room with nothing else to do.

I was fascinated at how full-of-holes most laws are. You'd think if the Congress passed a "Presidential Succession Act" then that would be the end of that, but no. Turns out, as opposed to what we learned in civics class, simply because the Congress passes a law doesn't mean that it will ever be applied the way they wanted it to.

Letter of the law, meaning of the law, and all that.

She sourced this to an anonymous TV talking head on a channel she doesn't recall. Anyone able to confirm/deny this?