What Is the Appropriate Majority for Overriding a Presidential Veto?
should be required to adopt laws over the president’s veto. Dickinson now joined Mercer’s earlier observation that judges should not have the power to invalidate laws on the basis that they believed them to be unconstitutional. Apparently emboldened, Morris reintroduced the idea of an absolute presidential veto as a means of protecting against legislative excesses. Sherman could see no reason to trust one man with such an awesome power and further “disapproved of Judges meddling in politics and parties.” The Convention then began to wrangle over the idea of postponement, with Rutledge complaining about “the tediousness of the proceedings” and Ellsworth saying that he and his fellow delegates were growing “more & more skeptical as we proceed” (II, 301). On a motion offered by North Carolina’s Hugh Williamson and seconded by Wilson, the Convention then adopted the motion to raise the required congressional majorities needed to override an executive veto from two-thirds to three-fourths b
