The President is elected for seven years and is eligible for re-election. The choice for so long a term and the possibility of re-election corresponded closely to the prevailing idea according to which the President should constitute a fixed and permanent point in the constitutional mechanism. “Granting,” said Preuss, “that the institutions set up by our Constitution should be as profoundly as possible stamped with democratic character, it is best, for the solidity of the whole edifice, that there should be in some part of it a durable and firm framework.” The Social Democrats observed that the longer the term of the President’s powers the more difficult it would be to effect a change in the person, and consequently the greater was the danger of seeing a life President installed. They proposed to fix five years as the term for which the President could remain in power and to make re-election more than once impossible. But this proposal was rejected.
Having fixed the term of the presidential power the Constitution had to provide for the situation in which a President ceased to function before the normal expiration of his powers or found himself prevented from exercising them. It was not desired, as in the United States, to institute a Vice-President who, as permanent representative and possible successor of the President, would have the status, in the words of Preuss, of a “republican crown-prince.” The provisions which were thereupon adopted are much more supple.
In case the President ceases his functions before their normal expiration, that is to say, in case of death, resignation, or impeachment, a new election is immediately held.
In case he is prevented from filling his duties, there must be made a distinction according to whether this inability seems apparently of short or long duration. In the first case, that is, in case of slight illness or because of a short voyage abroad, or during the first days of a disability which seems likely to be prolonged, or in the interval between the death of a President and the election of his successor, the place of the President is filled by the Chancellor. In the second case, that is, in case of serious illness or insanity, or when a motion has been passed by the Reichstag to impeach the President, or there is inaugurated a penal prosecution of the President before the National Judicial Court, the Constitution decides that an ordinary law shall determine expressly by whom his place shall be filled. This law may according to circumstances either install a temporary Vice-President, or confer temporarily the functions of the President on the Chancellor until the President is able to resume office, or finishes his term.
3.—THE POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT.
The powers vested in the President of the Reich by the Constitution are in general analogous to those possessed by every chief of state in a parliamentary country. Just as the Reichstag exercises in addition to its purely legislative powers a control over the Cabinet and its administration, just so, if the principles of the parliamentary system are to be applied, the President must be invested, in addition to his strictly executive authority, with powers that permit him to co-operate in legislative work and to exercise a control over the Reichstag itself.
It is precisely this, in effect, that the Constitution provides for. The President of the Reich has executive powers. He nominates ministers, he represents the Reich in foreign relations, he appoints all the civil and military servants, he is supreme chief of the forces of the Reich by land and sea, he exercises the right of pardon and he may make regulations.[42] He has also powers of a legislative character. He alone has authority to promulgate and publish enacted laws. He exercises a kind of right of veto over these laws; and he may, according to circumstances, in the complicated conditions we have already examined, either retard the entrance of these laws into operation, or submit them to the people by means of a referendum. Finally, he exercises a certain control over the Reichstag. He may order the President of the Reichstag to convoke that Assembly earlier than the normal date of its meeting. He nominates the judicial members of the electoral commission for disputed elections to the Reichstag. He may dissolve the Reichstag, etc.
It goes without saying that in none of these cases can the President take action without securing the support and the countersignature of a Minister. That is the essential condition of a parliamentary régime.
But to strengthen the action of a President and to give his position a place of real pre-eminence, which is desired for him, the Constitution entrusts him with a certain number of powers, which we must note particularly, for they are perhaps peculiar to the German Presidency, and give it a special character.
The President exercises an extremely powerful control over the legislative work of the Reichstag. When a law has been enacted he may, before promulgating it, submit it to a referendum. He may, when the Reichstag and the Reichsrat have declared urgent a law which they have enacted, promulgate it immediately even if a third of the Reichstag has demanded that its promulgation be deferred ([Article 72]). The aim of such a demand for postponement is to give the opponents of the law the chance to prepare a referendum and to proceed to it. The fact that the President has the right not to act on such a postponement and to give the law immediate operative power by promulgating it, offers him the chance to prevent such a referendum. It is also in his right when there is no agreement between the Reichstag and the Reichsrat on the text of a bill, either to decide that the law is not in effect and shall not enter into operation, or to decide for a referendum. He is free, finally, when a law has been passed in the Reichstag by a two-thirds majority against the protest of the Reichsrat, either to promulgate this law, or, if he does not wish to take the responsibility of that, to submit to a referendum the question on which the Reichstag and the Reichsrat disagree.