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Show WITHOUT A PRESIDENT. It may not be generally known that every four years the United States is j without a president for several hours, but such is the fact. The term of the outgoing president expires at midnight mid-night on March 3, and the new' president presi-dent is usually sworn in about noon the following day. During the intervening inter-vening hours the country is without a chief executive. The question of whether a vacancy exists during this interval was discussed dis-cussed early in the history of the country. coun-try. Tn response to an inquiry, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote on February Feb-ruary 21, 1821: "There has been uniformly and vol-im'arily vol-im'arily nn interval of 12 hours during dur-ing which the executive power could n-;t be exorcised." If an emergency demanded, the new in sident could be sworn in immediately imme-diately after his predecessor's term expired at midnight on March 3, but no situation has ever existed to make this necessary. |