Is a former U.S. president in any way barred from becoming a cabinet member?

May a former U.S. president be part of a successor's administration? More specifically, may Hillary Clinton make Barack Obama a member of her cabinet? Are there even any historic precedents for such a move?

105 3 3 bronze badges asked Sep 14, 2016 at 11:14 521 1 1 gold badge 4 4 silver badges 11 11 bronze badges US administrations don't have ministers; they have cabinet members. Commented Sep 14, 2016 at 12:37 Let us not forget that William Taft (#27) became a Supreme Court Justice after being President. Commented Sep 14, 2016 at 20:34

When I saw the title for this question, I thought it was asking if a former President could be a preacher, which seemed like an odd thing to ask. Pretty sure the First Amendment would invalidate any laws against that. I've proposed an edit for the title to say 'cabinet member' instead of 'minister.'

Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 3:37

@Insane Well, over here we usually get news in our own language. So the name of the post is usually translated. So the "US Secretary of State" is called "US-Außenminister", because that's what his job would be called in our country. Because of that it is very probable that the OP just fell victim to a "false friend".

Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 6:32 @Alexander It's a good thing our Secretaries run Departments then, not Ministries ;) Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 12:39

5 Answers 5

The relevant legislation appears to be the United States constitution (which defines some of the processes and procedures around the office of the President) and the United States Code (which includes some description of the scope of the Executive branch). The only specific proscription on the activities of former presidents seems to be the 22nd Amendment which states that

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

It's fairly clear that this doesn't apply to other executive offices.

In practice this is fairly unlikely to happen, if only because of the distracting sideshow of having one's predecessor in the job hanging around. The only remotely similar case I can think of is that of William Taft who eight years after serving as America's 27th President was appointed Chief Justice, and thus head of the judicial branch.