How Can a Bill Become Law Without the President’s Signature?

A bill can become federal law without the President’s signature in two ways: Congress can override a veto by a two-thirds vote in both chambers, or the President can hold the bill for ten days (Sundays excepted) while Congress remains in session, after which the bill becomes law on its own. Both routes come directly from Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution, and both produce a statute with the same legal force as one the President signed.¹

Becoming Law Through Presidential Inaction

Once the House and Senate pass a bill, it is presented to the President. From that point the President has ten days, not counting Sundays, to sign it, veto it, or do nothing. If the President does nothing and Congress stays in session through the full window, the bill becomes law automatically.¹

Presidents use this route for different reasons. Sometimes they disagree with parts of a bill but do not want the political cost of a veto fight. Sometimes the bill is minor enough that a formal signing ceremony is not worth arranging. Franklin D. Roosevelt let the Internal Revenue Act of 1938 become law this way, and Richard Nixon did the same with several bills, including a special milk program for children in 1970 and the Emergency Community Facilities Act later that year.²

How the 10-Day Clock Is Counted

The constitutional text reads “ten Days (Sundays excepted).” Every other day counts, including Saturdays, federal holidays, and congressional recess days. Only Sundays are skipped.¹

The clock starts the day after the bill is formally presented to the President. The word “after” in the constitutional text means the presentation day itself does not count as Day 1. Any Sundays inside the window are skipped, and if the tenth day lands on a Sunday, the President has until Monday to act.

Overriding a Presidential Veto

When the President vetoes a bill, it goes back to the chamber where it originated, along with a written explanation of the objections. That chamber votes on whether to pass the bill anyway. If two-thirds of the members present vote yes, the bill moves to the other chamber for the same vote. Both chambers must clear the two-thirds threshold for the override to succeed.¹

The two-thirds requirement applies to members present and voting, not to the full membership of the chamber. The Supreme Court confirmed this in 1919, holding that “two thirds of that House” means two-thirds of a quorum, which is itself a majority of total members.³ In theory the House could override with as few as 145 votes if only 218 members showed up, though attendance during override votes is almost always high because both sides know the stakes.

Each chamber’s vote must be recorded by name. The Constitution requires that all override votes be tallied as “yeas and nays,” with every member’s position entered into the official journal. There are no anonymous override votes.¹

How Often Overrides Actually Succeed

Overriding a veto is one of the hardest things Congress can do. Since 1789, presidents have vetoed 2,599 bills, counting both regular vetoes and pocket vetoes. Congress has successfully overridden just 112 of those.⁴ That works out to roughly a 7 percent success rate on regular vetoes alone, since pocket vetoes cannot be overridden at all.

The math explains the difficulty. A president’s party almost always holds more than one-third of the seats in at least one chamber, which is enough to block any override. Successful overrides tend to happen when a bill has overwhelming bipartisan support and the veto is politically unpopular. Even then, party loyalty usually holds enough members in line to sustain the veto.

One Situation Where Inaction Kills the Bill Instead

Presidential silence does not always enact a bill. If Congress adjourns before the ten-day window expires and the President has not signed the bill, the bill dies. This is the pocket veto. The President sends back no veto message and offers no explanation. The bill simply never becomes law, and because it was never formally returned with objections, Congress has no opportunity to override it. Pursuing the same policy requires reintroducing it as new legislation.⁵

Of the 2,599 total vetoes since 1789, 1,066 were pocket vetoes.⁴ The point worth carrying away is the boundary: the 10-day rule only enacts a bill if Congress stays in session throughout the window. Modern Congress often uses brief “pro forma sessions” during recesses to avoid a full adjournment, a practice the Supreme Court accepted in NLRB v. Noel Canning (2014), which in practice limits pocket vetoes largely to the final adjournment of a two-year Congress.⁶

When the New Law Takes Effect

A bill that becomes law without the President’s signature takes effect on the date it achieves legal status, unless the bill itself sets a different date. For a veto override, that date is when the second chamber completes its override vote. For the 10-day rule, it is the day after the ten-day window expires. The Supreme Court has held that when a law does not specify its own effective date, it takes effect on the date of approval, starting from the first moment of that day.⁷

Once enacted, laws created through either path carry the same weight as any law the President signed. They receive a public law number, are published in the Federal Register, and are codified into the United States Code. No legal distinction exists between a law the President endorsed and one that took effect over the President’s objection or silence.

1
Library of Congress. Article I Section 7 Legislation
2
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum. Legislation Becoming Law Without the Presidents Signature
3
Library of Congress. Missouri Pacific Railway Co v Kansas
4
U.S. Senate. Vetoes, 1789 to Present
5
U.S. Department of Justice. Use of the Pocket Veto During Intersession Adjournments
6
Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. NLRB v Canning
7
Cornell Law School – Legal Information Institute. Overview of Presidential Approval or Veto of Bills