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Title 28 — Judiciary and Judicial Procedure

Part I · Chapter 1 — Supreme Court

§ 3. Vacancy in office of Chief Justice; disability

Statutory text

Whenever the Chief Justice is unable to perform the duties of his office or the office is vacant, his powers and duties shall devolve upon the associate justice next in precedence who is able to act, until such disability is removed or another Chief Justice is appointed and duly qualified.

Legislative history

Reconstructed from this section’s Code source credit and amendment notes, resolved against the local Statutes at Large. Editorial notes are evidence, not the law that made the change.

  1. Title 28, United States Code, section —

    Pub. L. 80–646 · 62 Stat. 869

    Enacted · 28 U.S.C. § 3

    (June 25, 1948, ch. 646, 62 Stat. 869.)

    Source evidence

    Code source credit
    (June 25, 1948, ch. 646, 62 Stat. 869.)

0 of 1 references resolved to an enrolled provision · 1 partial

Notes

Historical and Revision Notes

Based on title 28, U.S.C., 1940 ed., § 323 (Mar. 3, 1911, ch. 231, § 217, 36 Stat. 1152).

The sentence, “This provision shall apply to every Associate Justice who succeeds to the office of Chief Justice”, was omitted as covered by last portion of revised section.

Minor changes were made in phraseology.

For seniority of commissions, see section 4 of this title.

Credits

(June 25, 1948, ch. 646, 62 Stat. 869.)

Parsed from the official OLRC USLM XML in data/usc_all/usc28.xml · release point 119-108 · OLRC build 2026-04-17

USLM identifier /us/usc/t28/s3