Are there any Supreme Court cases that have directly issued rulings citing the 25th amendment?

Question

Background

Amendments to the U.S. constitution have been cited in rulings of Supreme Court cases, the 14th amendment is a notorious one and the 2nd amendment is another good example.

I have been trying to find relevant case law directly dealing with the 25th amendment to be able to expound upon this tag in Politics.SE, but nothing seems to turn up that directly mentions, or cites the 25th amendment.

Question

Is there any relevant Supreme Court cases that has cited, or issued a landmark interpretation of, the 25th amendment to the United States constitution?

Answer 1

No.

There is only one U.S. Supreme Court case mentioning the 25th Amendment at all, Lubin v. Panish, 415 U.S. 709, 713 (1974), and it only does so in passing, as part of a discussion of changing trends in ballot access law, citing it as evidence of "an enlarged demand for an expansion of political opportunity."

Although none of them do much to actually interpret it, either, there are a few circuit-court opinions citing the 25th Amendment:

• Chula Vista Citizens for Jobs & Fair Competition v. Norris, 782 F.3d 520, 529 (9th Cir. 2015);

• Wilson-Jones v. Caviness, 99 F.3d 203, 208 (6th Cir. 1996);

• Estate of Rockefeller v. Comm'r, 762 F.2d 264, 271 (2d Cir. 1985).

Answer 2

No

In order for the courts at any level to hear a case, there must be an actual controversy between both parties. Since the 25th Amendment is all about Presidential Succession and at time of writing, no President has died in office since the law was passed, no one has had actual controversy such that standing to be heard was established.

Conversely the 14th amendment was basically patching loopholes in the Constitution that brought about the Civil War, which occurred due to a Constitutional Crisis brought about by Slavery and which level of government had the right to regulate it. The 2nd Amendment actually doesn't come up often before SCOTUS (it's had a few cases heard recently, most notable being Heller which was a landmark case because it was the first case to really get a 2nd amendment ruling (what's crazier is the 3rd Amendment is the only Amendment to never get a name check in a Supreme Court decision. Generally, the Amendments 1 and 4-8 get the most rulings because they have a lot of people who have standing to fight them, and 14th basically is a coverall that enforces states to recognize rights granted by the feds.

Basically the reason there is not much from SCOTUS on the 25th is because it hasn't really come up.