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United States presidential line of succession

The United States presidential line of succession is the order in which the vice president of the United States and other officers of the United States federal government assume the powers and duties of the U.S. presidency (or the office itself, in the instance of succession by the vice president) upon an elected president's death, resignation, removal from office, or incapacity.

The order of succession specifies that the office passes to the vice president; if the vice presidency is simultaneously vacant, the powers and duties of the presidency pass to the speaker of the House of Representatives, president pro tempore of the Senate, and then Cabinet secretaries, depending on eligibility.

Presidential succession is referred to multiple times in the U.S. Constitution: Article II, Section 1, Clause 6, the 12th Amendment, 20th Amendment, and 25th Amendment. The vice president is designated as first in the presidential line of succession by the Article II succession clause, which also authorizes Congress to provide for a line of succession beyond the vice president. It has done so on three occasions. The Presidential Succession Act was adopted in 1947, and last revised in 2006. The 25th Amendment, adopted in 1967, also establishes procedures for filling an intra-term vacancy in the office of the vice president.

The Presidential Succession Act refers specifically to officers beyond the vice president acting as president rather than becoming president when filling a vacancy. The Cabinet has 15 members, of which the secretary of state is highest and fourth in line (after the Senate president pro tem); the other Cabinet secretaries follow in the order of when their departments (or the department of which their department is the successor) were created. Those heads of department who are constitutionally not "eligible to the Office of President" are disqualified from assuming the powers and duties of the president through succession and skipped to the next in line. Since 1789, the vice president has succeeded to the presidency intra-term on nine occasions: eight times due to the incumbent's death, and once due to resignation. No one lower in the line of succession has ever been called upon to act as president.

Widely considered a settled issue during the late 20th century, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 demonstrated the potential for a decapitation strike that would kill or incapacitate multiple individuals in the presidential line of succession in addition to many members of Congress and the federal judiciary. In the years immediately following the attacks, numerous wide-ranging discussions were started, in Congress, among academics and within the public policy community about continuity of government concerns including the existing constitutional and statutory provisions governing presidential succession. These discussions remain ongoing. One effort put forward by the Continuity of Government Commission, a nonpartisan think tank, produced three reports (2003, 2009, and 2011), the second of which focused on the implicit ambiguities and limitations in the succession act, and contained recommendations for amending the laws for succession to the presidency.

Current order of succession
The presidential order of succession is set by the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, as amended. The order consists of congressional officers, followed by the members of the cabinet in the order of the establishment of each department, provided that each officer satisfies the constitutional requirements for serving as president. In the table below, the absence of a number in the first column indicates that the office is either vacant, or that the incumbent is ineligible.

Presidential eligibility
Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution sets three qualifications for holding the presidency: One must be a natural-born citizen of the United States (or a citizen at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, in 1788), be at least 35 years of age and have been a resident in the United States for at least fourteen years.

Presidential succession
The presidential line of succession is mentioned in four places in the Constitution:

 * Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 makes the vice president first in the line of succession and allows the Congress to provide by law for cases in which neither the president nor vice president can serve.
 * The 12th Amendment provided that the vice president would also fill any vacancy of the presidency arising from failure of the House of Representatives to choose a president in a contingent election.
 * The 20th Amendment, Section 3, supersedes the above 12th Amendment provision, by declaring that if the president-elect dies before his term begins, the vice president-elect becomes president on Inauguration Day and serves for the full term to which the president-elect was elected, and also that, if on Inauguration Day, a president has not been chosen or the president-elect does not qualify for the presidency, the vice president-elect acts as president until a president is chosen or the president-elect qualifies. It also authorizes Congress to provide for instances in which neither a president-elect nor a vice president-elect have qualified.
 * The 25th Amendment, Section 1, clarifies Article II, Section 1, Clause 6, by stating unequivocally that the vice president is the direct successor of the president, and becomes president if the incumbent dies, resigns or is removed from office. It also, in sections 3 and 4, provides for situations where the president is temporarily disabled, such as if the president has a surgical procedure or becomes mentally unfit, establishing procedures whereby the vice president can become acting president. Additionally, in Section 2, the amendment provides a mechanism for intra-term vice presidential succession, establishing that a vice presidential vacancy will be filled by a president's nominee upon confirmation by a majority vote of both houses of Congress. Previously, whenever a vice president had succeeded to the presidency or had died or resigned from office, the vice presidency remained vacant until the next presidential and vice presidential terms began; there were 16 such vacancies prior to 1967.

Act of 1792
The Presidential Succession Act of 1792 provided for succession after the president and vice president: first, the president pro tempore of the Senate, followed by the speaker of the House. The statute provided that the presidential successor would serve in an acting capacity, holding office only until a new president could be elected. A special election was to be held in November of the year in which dual vacancies occurred (unless the vacancies occurred after the first Wednesday in October, in which case the election would occur the following year; or unless the vacancies occurred within the last year of the presidential term, in which case the next election would take place as regularly scheduled). The persons elected president and vice president in such a special election would have served a full four-year term beginning on March 4 of the next year. No such election ever took place.

Various framers of the Constitution, such as James Madison, criticized the arrangement as being contrary to their intent. The decision to build the line of succession around those two officials was made after a long and contentious debate. In addition to the president pro tempore and the speaker, both the secretary of state and the chief justice of the Supreme Court were also suggested. Including the secretary of state was unacceptable to most Federalists, who did not want the then secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, who had become the leader of the opposition Democratic-Republicans, to follow the vice president in the succession, and many objected to including the chief justice due to separation of powers concerns.

Act of 1886
The Presidential Succession Act of 1886 established succession to include the members of the president's cabinet in the order of the establishment of the various departments, beginning with the secretary of state, and stipulated that any official discharging the powers and duties of the presidency must possess the constitutional qualifications to hold the office. The president pro tempore and speaker were excluded from the new line, and the provision mandating a special presidential election when a double vacancy arose was also dropped.

The need for increasing the number of presidential successors was abundantly clear to Congress, for twice within the span of just over four years it happened that there was no one in the presidential line of succession. In September 1881, when Chester A. Arthur succeeded to the presidency following James A. Garfield's death, there was no vice president, no president pro tempore of the Senate, and no speaker of the House of Representatives. Then, in November 1885, Grover Cleveland faced a similar situation, following the death of Vice President Thomas A. Hendricks, as the Senate and the House had not convened yet to elect new officers.

Act of 1947
The Presidential Succession Act of 1947, which was signed into law on July 18, 1947, restored the speaker of the House and president pro tempore of the Senate to the line of succession—but in reverse-order from their 1792 positions—and placed them ahead of the members of the Cabinet, positioned, as before, in the order of the establishment of their department.

Placing the speaker and the president pro tempore (both elected officials) back in the succession and placing them ahead of cabinet members (all of whom are appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate), was Harry S. Truman's idea. Personally conveyed to Congress in June 1945, two months after becoming president upon Franklin D. Roosevelt's death, the proposal reflected Truman's belief that the president should not have the power to appoint to office "the person who would be my immediate successor in the event of my own death or inability to act", and that the presidency should, whenever possible, "be filled by an elective officer."

Further amendments
The 1947 act has been modified several times, with changes being made as the face of the federal bureaucracy has changed over the ensuing years. Its most recent change came about in 2006, when the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act added the secretary of homeland security to the presidential line of succession.

Ambiguities regarding succession and inability
Although the Presidential Succession Clause in Article II of the Constitution clearly provided for the vice president to take over the "powers and duties" of the presidency in the event of a president's removal, death, resignation, or inability, left unclear was whether the vice president became president of the United States or simply temporarily acted as president in a case of succession. Some historians, including Edward Corwin and John D. Feerick, have argued that the framers' intention was that the vice president would remain vice president while executing the powers and duties of the presidency until a new president could be elected.

The hypothetical debate about whether the office or merely the powers of the office devolve upon a vice president who succeeds to the presidency between elections became an urgent constitutional issue in 1841, when President William Henry Harrison died in office. Vice President John Tyler claimed a constitutional mandate to carry out the full powers and duties of the presidency, asserting he was the president and not merely a temporary acting president, by taking the presidential oath of office.

Many around him—including John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and other members of Congress,  along with Whig party leaders, and even Tyler's own cabinet  —believed that he was only acting as president and did not have the office itself. He was nicknamed "His Accidency" and excoriated as a usurper. Nonetheless, Tyler adhered to his position, even returning, unopened, mail addressed to the "Acting President of the United States" sent by his detractors. Tyler's view ultimately prevailed when the House and Senate voted to accept the title "President", setting a precedent for an orderly transfer of presidential power following a president's death, one that was subsequently written into the Constitution as section 1 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment.

Even after the precedent regarding presidential succession due to the president's death was set, the part of the Presidential Succession Clause that provided for replacing a disabled president remained unclear. What constituted an "inability"? Who determined the existence of an inability? Did a vice president become president for the rest of the presidential term in the case of an inability; or was the vice president merely "acting as President"? Due to this lack of clarity, later vice presidents were hesitant to assert any role in cases of presidential inability. Two situations are noteworthy:

 * On July 2, 1881, President James A. Garfield was shot; hit from behind by two bullets (one grazing his arm and the other lodging in his back). The president wavered between life and death for 80 days after the shooting; it was the first time that the nation as a whole experienced the uncertainties associated with a prolonged period of presidential inability. Most disconcerting, especially for Garfield administration personnel and members of Congress, was the lack of constitutional guidance on how to handle the situation. No one was sure who, if anyone, should exercise presidential authority while the president was disabled; many urged Vice President Chester A. Arthur to step up, but he declined, fearful of being labeled a usurper. Aware that he was in a delicate position and that his every action was placed under scrutiny, Arthur remained secluded in his New York City home for most of the summer. Members of the Garfield Cabinet conferred daily with the president's doctors and kept the vice president informed of significant developments on the president's condition.
 * In October 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke. Nearly blind and partially paralyzed, he spent the final 17 months of his presidency sequestered in the White House. Vice President Thomas R. Marshall, the cabinet, and the nation were kept in the dark over the severity of the president's illness for several months. Marshall was pointedly afraid to ask about Wilson's health, or to preside over cabinet meetings, fearful that he would be accused of "longing for his place". Though members of both parties in Congress pledged to support him if he asserted his claim to the presidential powers and duties, Marshall declined to act, or to do anything that might seem ambitious or disloyal to Wilson. At a time when the fight over joining the League of Nations was reaching a climax, and domestic issues such as strikes, unemployment, inflation and the threat of Communism were demanding action, the operations of the executive branch were once more hampered due to the fact that there was no constitutional basis for declaring that the president was unable to function.

When President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in September 1955, he and Vice President Richard Nixon developed an informal plan authorizing Nixon to assume some administrative duties during Eisenhower's recovery. Although it did not have the force of law, the plan helped to reassure the nation. The agreement also contained a provision whereby Eisenhower could declare his own inability and, if unable to do so, empowered Nixon, with appropriate consultation, to make the decision. Had it been invoked, Nixon would have served as acting president until the president issued a declaration of his recovery. Moved forward as a consequence of President Kennedy's November 1963 assassination, this informal plan evolved into constitutional procedure a decade later through Sections 3 and 4 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, which resolved the uncertainties surrounding presidential disability.

Presidential succession by vice presidents
Nine vice presidents have succeeded to the presidency intra-term, eight due to the president's death, and one due to the president's resignation from office.

Additionally, three vice presidents have temporarily assumed the powers and duties of the presidency as acting president, as authorized by Section 3 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment: George H. W. Bush did so once, on July 13, 1985; Dick Cheney did so twice, on June 29, 2002 and again on July 21, 2007; and Kamala Harris did so on November 19, 2021.

Presidential succession beyond the vice president
While several vice presidents have succeeded to the presidency upon the death or resignation of the president, and a number of them have died or resigned, the offices of president and vice president have never been simultaneously vacant; thus no other officer in the presidential line of succession has ever been called upon to act as president. There was potential for such a double vacancy when John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, as Vice President Andrew Johnson was also targeted (along with Secretary of State William Seward and possibly General Ulysses S. Grant) as part of Booth's plot to destabilize the Union government. It again became a real possibility three years later, when, with the vice presidency vacant, Johnson as president was impeached by the House of Representatives and faced removal from office if convicted at trial in the Senate. Johnson was acquitted by a one-vote margin.

The 25th Amendment's mechanism for filling vice presidential vacancies has reduced the likelihood that the House speaker, Senate president pro tempore, or any cabinet member will need to serve as acting president. In October 1973, the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew made House Speaker Carl Albert first in line to succeed President Richard Nixon – but only briefly, as Gerald Ford was sworn in as vice president on December 6, 1973. On August 9, 1974, Nixon resigned the presidency, making Ford president; Albert was then again next in line, but only for the four months it took for Nelson Rockefeller to be nominated and confirmed as Ford's vice president.

Next in line
Since 1789 there have been eighteen instances of the vice presidency becoming vacant; during those periods, the persons next in line to serve as acting president were:

Contemporary issues and concerns
In 2003, the Continuity of Government Commission suggested that the succession law has "at least seven significant issues ... that warrant attention", specifically:

 * 1) The reality that all figures in the line of succession work and reside in the vicinity of Washington, D.C. In the event of a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack, it is possible that everyone on the list would be killed or incapacitated. For this concern, one of the listed people is selected as "designated survivor" and stays on another secret location during certain events where all others are present, such as the State of the Union address.
 * 2) Doubt that the speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate are constitutionally eligible to act as president.
 * 3) A concern about the wisdom of including the president pro tempore in the line of succession as the "largely honorific post traditionally held by the longest-serving senator of the majority party". For example, from January 20, 2001, to June 6, 2001, the president pro tempore was then-98-year-old Strom Thurmond.
 * 4) A concern that the line of succession can force the presidency to abruptly switch parties mid-term, as the president, speaker, and the president pro tempore are not necessarily of the same party as each other.
 * 5) A concern that the succession line is ordered by the dates of creation of the various executive departments, without regard to the skills or capacities of the persons serving as secretary.
 * 6) The fact that, should a Cabinet member begin to act as president, the law allows the House to elect a new speaker (or the Senate to elect a new president pro tempore), who could in effect remove the Cabinet member and assume the office themselves at any time.
 * 7) The absence of a provision where a president is disabled and the vice presidency is vacant (for example, if an assassination attempt simultaneously wounded the president and killed the vice president).

In 2009, the Continuity of Government Commission commented on the use of the term "Officer" in the 1947 statute,

"The language in the current Presidential Succession Act is less clear than that of the 1886 Act with respect to Senate confirmation. The 1886 Act refers to 'such officers as shall have been appointed by the advice and consent of the Senate to the office therein named …' The current act merely refers to 'officers appointed, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.' Read literally, this means that the current act allows for acting secretaries to be in the line of succession as long as they are confirmed by the Senate for a post (even for example, the second or third in command within a department). It is common for a second in command to become acting secretary when the secretary leaves office. Though there is some dispute over this provision, the language clearly permits acting secretaries to be placed in the line of succession. (We have spoken to acting secretaries who told us they had been placed in the line of succession.)" In 2016–2017, the Second Fordham University School of Law Clinic on Presidential Succession developed a series of proposals to "resolve succession issues that have received little attention from scholars and commissions" over the past several decades; its recommendations included:

 * Removing legislators and several Cabinet members from the line of succession and adding four officials, or "Standing Successors", outside of Washington, D.C. The line of succession would be: —Secretary of State, —Secretary of Defense, —Attorney General, —Secretary of Homeland Security, —Secretary of the Treasury, —Standing Successor 1, —Standing Successor 2, —Standing Successor 3, and —Standing Successor 4;
 * If legislators are not removed from the line of succession, only designate them as successors in cases where the president dies or resigns, not where he is disabled (to protect legislators from being forced to resign to act as president temporarily) or removed from office;
 * Eliminate the "bumping provision" in the Succession Act of 1947;
 * Clarify the ambiguity in the Succession Act of 1947 as to whether acting Cabinet secretaries are in the line of succession;
 * That the outgoing president nominate and the Senate confirm some of the incoming president's Cabinet secretaries prior to Inauguration Day, which is a particular point of vulnerability for the line of succession;
 * Establish statutory procedures for declaring 1) a dual inability of the president and the vice president, including where there is no vice president and 2) a sole inability of the vice president.


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Fraternity (disambiguation)

A fraternity is an organisation of men.

Fraternity may also refer to:

Associations

 * Benefit society
 * Chivalric order
 * Fraternal order
 * Friendly society
 * Honor society, an organization which recognizes achievement
 * Religious order
 * Secret society
 * Social club
 * Trade union

Europe

 * Corporation (university), college fraternity; for example German Student Corps
 * Nation (university), student organization
 * Studentenverbindung, student organizations in Germany
 * Student society
 * Students' union

North America

 * College fraternities and sororities, also called Greek letter organizations or social fraternities, initiatory organizations which unite students through the undergraduate college course
 * Collegiate secret societies in North America, organizations in which membership is limited by year of study
 * Literary society, an organization formed as a student-directed supplement to the academic curriculum
 * Professional fraternities and sororities, organizations which promote fellowship among those in a particular academic discipline or career field
 * Service fraternities and sororities, organizations whose primary purpose is community service

Sociology

 * Fraternity (philosophy), a type of relationship between people

Other uses

 * Fraternity (band), an Australian rock group from the early 1970s, featuring AC/DC's Bon Scott
 * Fraternity Records, a record label

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Fraternity (disambiguation)


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Capitol Records

Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007) is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-based record label of note in the United States in 1942 by Johnny Mercer, Buddy DeSylva, and Glenn E. Wallichs. Capitol was acquired by British music conglomerate EMI as its North American subsidiary in 1955. EMI was acquired by Universal Music Group in 2012, and was merged with the company a year later, making Capitol and the Capitol Music Group both distributed by UMG. The label's circular headquarters building is a recognized landmark of Hollywood, California.

Capitol is known as the record label of the Beach Boys and The Kingston Trio, and as the U.S. label of the Beatles (their native label being Parlophone), especially during the years of Beatlemania in the U.S. from 1964 to 1967. Capitol Records artist roster also includes Ice Spice, Sam Smith, Katy Perry, Troye Sivan, Kodak Black, Doechii, Yeat, That Mexican OT, Young Miko, Maggie Rogers, Lewis Capaldi, Kings of Leon, Paul McCartney, Beastie Boys, and Bee Gees.

Founding
Songwriter Johnny Mercer founded Capitol Records in 1942 with financial help from songwriter and film producer Buddy DeSylva and the business acumen of Glenn Wallichs, owner of Wallichs Music City. Mercer raised the idea of starting a record company while golfing with Harold Arlen and Bobby Sherwood and with Wallichs at Wallichs's record store. On February 2, 1942, Mercer and Wallichs met DeSylva at a restaurant in Hollywood to talk about investment by Paramount Pictures.

On March 27, 1942, the three men incorporated as Liberty Records (not affiliated with Capitol's future sister label Liberty Records). In May, the application was amended to change the label's name to Capitol Records.

On April 6, 1942, Mercer supervised Capitol's first recording session where Martha Tilton recorded the song "Moon Dreams". On May 5, Bobby Sherwood and his orchestra recorded two tracks in the studio. On May 21, Freddie Slack and his orchestra recorded three tracks in the studio: one with the orchestra, one with Ella Mae Morse called "Cow-Cow Boogie" and "Air-Minded Executive" supervised by Mercer. On June 4, Capitol opened its first office in a second-floor room south of Sunset Boulevard. On that same day, Wallichs presented the company's first free record to Los Angeles disc jockey Peter Potter. On June 5, Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra recorded four songs at the studio. On June 12, the orchestra recorded five more songs in the studio, including "Trav'lin' Light" with Billie Holiday. On June 11, Tex Ritter recorded "(I Got Spurs That) Jingle Jangle Jingle" and "Goodbye My Little Cherokee" for his first Capitol recording session, and the songs comprised Capitol's 110th produced record.

The earliest recording artists included co-owner Mercer, Johnnie Johnston, Morse, Jo Stafford, the Pied Pipers, Tex Ritter, Tilton, Paul Weston, Whiteman, and Margaret Whiting. Capitol's first gold single was Morse's "Cow Cow Boogie" in 1942.

Capitol's first album was Capitol Presents Songs by Johnny Mercer, a three disc set with recordings by Mercer, Stafford and the Pied Pipers, all with Weston's orchestra.

Capitol was the first major west coast label to compete with major labels on the east coast such as RCA Victor, Columbia, and Decca. In addition to its Los Angeles recording studios, Capitol owned a second studio in New York City and occasionally sent mobile recording equipment to other cities.

Other genres
In 1946, writer-producer Alan W. Livingston created Bozo the Clown for the company's children's record library, with Pinto Colvig (the voice of Goofy in Walt Disney cartoons) as Bozo. Mel Blanc reprised his own cartoon roles including Bugs Bunny and other Looney Tunes characters, as well as Woody Woodpecker, while several Disney records were narrated by radio announcer Don Wilson. Examples of notable Capitol albums for children during that era are Sparky's Magic Piano and Rusty in Orchestraville. Capitol also developed a noted jazz catalog that included the Capitol Jazz Men and issued the Miles Davis's album Birth of the Cool.

Capitol released a few classical albums in the 1940s, some of which contained handsome heavily embossed, leather-like covers. These recordings appeared on the 78 rpm format and were subsequently reissued on the new LP format in 1949. Among the recordings: Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos' Choros No. 10, with contributions from a Los Angeles choral group and the Janssen Symphony Orchestra (1940–1952), conducted by Werner Janssen; Symphony No. 3 by Russian composer Reinhold Moritzovich Glière; and César Franck's Symphony in D minor, with Willem Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra.

In 1949, Capitol opened a branch office in Canada and purchased KHJ Studios on Melrose Avenue adjacent to Paramount in Hollywood.

By the 1950s, Capitol had become a huge label that concentrated primarily on popular music.

Capitol began recording rock and roll acts such as The Jodimars and Gene Vincent. There were comedy records by Stan Freberg, Johnny Standley, and Mickey Katz. On August 2, 1952, Billboard magazine contained a chronicle of the label's first ten years in business.

Ownership under EMI
In 1955, the British record company EMI (which evolved into Universal Music Group) purchased Capitol Records, ending the 55-year mutual distribution agreement between EMI and RCA Victor in the Western Hemisphere in 1957. EMI acquired 96% of Capitol's stock for $8.5 million. EMI built a studio at Hollywood and Vine to match its state-of-the-art Abbey Road Studios in London.

In the 1950s, Decca Records broke its distribution contract with Panart, the first independent Cuban record company. This provided an opening for Capitol, which then contracted with Panart to have Capitol and Odeon records distributed in Cuba. In turn, Capitol distributed Panart records in the United States, growing the export percentage of Panart records from 20 percent to 50 percent. This was a coup for Capitol, as RCA Victor up to this point had huge predominance in the United States distribution of Cuban music recordings.

In 1957, EMI's classical label Angel was merged into Capitol. Some classical recordings were issued in high fidelity and stereophonic sound. These included William Steinberg and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski with various orchestras (including the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra) and Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as light classical albums by Carmen Dragon and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and albums of film music conducted by Hollywood composers such as Alfred Newman.

In the realm of "Sweet Jazz" big-band music, Capitol also joined forces with the bandleader Guy Lombardo starting in the mid 1950s to issue a series of approximately thirty recordings until the late 1960s.

The Capitol of the World series introduced in 1956 and active into the 1970s encompassed German Beer Drinking Songs, Honeymoon in Rome, Australian Aboriginals, and ''Kasongo! Modern Music of the Belgian Congo''. Many were produced by Dave Dexter Jr. This series contained over 400 albums. It was also in this period that Capitol issued Christmas music recordings from various countries outside the United States. In the 1960s Capitol established subsidiary labels including Tower Records. Capitol was the US distributor of the Beatles' Apple Records.

In October 1979, EMI merged with Thorn Electrical Industries to form Thorn EMI and, due to business models increasingly diverging, on August 16, 1996, Thorn EMI's shareholders voted to demerge. The resulting media company was then known as the EMI Group. In June 1997, Capitol, together with Virgin Records, absorbed EMI USA, which folded.

Distribution under Universal Music Group
In 2012, the recorded music operations of EMI were sold to the Universal Music Group and the world headquarters were re-established in the Capitol Tower in Hollywood as part of the subsequent reorganization of the Capitol Music Group. Steve Barnett, previously an employee of Columbia, was hired as chairman and CEO of the division.

Capitol filed a lawsuit against Vimeo, an online video-sharing website, for audio copyright infringement. Capitol filed the claim after users were visibly lip-synching to some of their tracks.

Following legal action by Capitol against the ReDigi.com online company in April 2013, the latter was found to have violated copyright law. Capitol Records claimed that ReDigi was guilty of copyright infringement due to a business model that facilitated the creation of additional copies of Capitol's digital music files, whereby users could upload the files for downloading or streaming to the new purchaser of the file. ReDigi argued that the resale of MP3/digital music files is permitted under certain doctrines ("fair use" and "first sale") but the court maintained that the doctrines' application "was limited to material items that the copyright owner put into the stream of commerce."

In 2014, PGH Live Music joined the team and Katy Perry founded the record label Metamorphosis Music, starting a label venture with Capitol. The name of the label was later changed to Unsub Records in 2016.

Also that year, Capitol rose to number two market share and won four categories at the Grammy Awards for music by Beck and Sam Smith.

In 2018, Capitol's electronic division Astralwerks relaunched with a new team and moved its entire operations to Capitol's tower in Los Angeles.

In 2019, Jeff Vaughn was named President of Capitol Records, assuming his position as of January 1, 2020.

In 2021, Michelle Jubelirer was named the Chair & CEO of Capitol.

In 2024, Capitol Records became part of UMG's Interscope Capitol Labels Group.

Headquarters
Designed by Welton Becket with Louis Naidorf, a young architect from Becket's office, serving as project designer the thirteen-story, earthquake-resistant Capitol Records Tower was the world's first circular office building and it is the base for several recording studios. Although not intended as a tribute to record players, its wide curved awnings and tall narrow tower mimic the appearance of a stack of gramophone records atop a phonograph. The building was commissioned by EMI after its acquisition of Capitol Records in 1955 and was completed in April 1956. The building is north of the intersection of Hollywood and Vine and is the center of the company's consolidated West Coast operations. It was nicknamed "The House That Nat Built" after the financial success of Capitol singer Nat King Cole. The rectangular ground floor is a separate structure joined to the tower after it was completed.

In September 2006, EMI announced that it had sold the tower and adjacent properties for $50 million to New York-based developer Argent Ventures. In mid-2008, a controversy erupted over a plan to build a condominium complex next door, igniting fears that the building's acoustic properties, specifically its underground echo chambers, would be compromised. It was announced in November 2012 that Steve Barnett would become chairman and CEO of Capitol Music Group and would be based at the Capitol Records Building. Capitol and artist Richard Wyatt Jr. restored his Hollywood Jazz Mural on the south wall of the Capitol Records Building.

Studios
Capitol's recording studios were designed to minimize noise and vibration, then newly important goals in the high-fidelity sound era. An inner wall floating on layers of rubber and cork was erected inside the building's 10 in concrete exterior walls, leaving a one-inch air gap to provide complete sound isolation. The facility also features subterranean echo chambers that allow engineers to add reverberation during the recording process. Eight trapezoidal chambers are located 30 ft underground, with 10-inch concrete walls and 12 in concrete ceilings. Speakers on one side and microphones on the other permit an echo effect of up to five seconds. Studios A and B can be combined for the recording of orchestral music and symphonic film soundtracks. The first album recorded in the tower was Frank Sinatra Conducts Tone Poems of Color.

International operations
Capitol modified albums that were originally released in other countries on other labels. Albums released in the United States contained fewer tracks, usually no more than 11 or 12, compared to albums released in the United Kingdom due to differences in the method of publishing royalties were calculated in the two countries. Also, in the American market it was expected that albums would include the current hit single, whereas British albums typically did not duplicate songs released as singles.

The Beatles
Possibly the best-known treatment of an international artist's recordings was the label's release pattern for various albums by the Beatles. This began with Capitol's release of Meet the Beatles!, the first album by the band to be released by Capitol in the United States. It was based on the British album With the Beatles, which contained 14 tracks and a running time of around 35 minutes. Capitol removed five tracks ("Money", "You've Really Got a Hold on Me", "Devil in Her Heart", "Please Mister Postman", and "Roll Over Beethoven") and added both sides of the band's first American hit single ("I Want to Hold Your Hand" c/w "I Saw Her Standing There") and the British single's B-side, "This Boy". "I Saw Her Standing There" was on the Beatles' first British album, Please Please Me. This resulted in Capitol releasing Meet the Beatles as a 12-track album with a duration of around 30 minutes and made it comparable with other American pop albums. It also provided Capitol with unreleased tracks for use in later US Beatles albums such as The Beatles' Second Album.

Capitol also issued "duophonic" stereo releases of some recordings where the original master was monophonic. Capitol engineers split the single master mono track into two, boosted the bass on the right channel, boosted treble on the left channel and added a split-second delay between channels to produce a "stereo" release. This duophonic process meant that the Beatles' American fans occasionally heard a slightly different song from that heard by the rest of the world if they listened to the stereo version.

This trend in the Beatles' American discography continued until 1967 when a new recording contract with EMI was signed. Unhappy with the way Capitol in the US and other companies around the world were issuing their work in almost unrecognizable forms, beginning in 1967 the Beatles gained full approval of album titles and cover art, track listing and running order in North America. Starting with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Beatles' albums were released unmodified. The issue of 45 RPM singles featuring album tracks was also stopped. Instead, non-album tracks were issued as singles between album releases.

United Kingdom
Beginning in 1948, Capitol Records were released in the UK on the Capitol label by Decca. After its 1955 acquisition of Capitol, EMI took over distribution in 1956. EMI's Parlophone unit handled Capitol label marketing in the UK in later years.

In 2012, EMI was sold to Universal Music Group. Universal Music started Capitol as an autonomous label in the UK with the rights to the Beatles' catalog. This marks the first time that Capitol in the UK operated as an autonomous label.

Canada
Capitol Records of Canada was established in 1949 by businessman W. Lockwood Miller. Capitol broke with Miller's company and formed Capitol Record Distributors of Canada Limited in 1954. EMI acquired this company when it acquired Capitol. The company was renamed Capitol Records of Canada Ltd. in 1958 after Miller's rights to the name expired. In 1959, Capitol of Canada picked up distribution rights for EMI's labels Angel, Pathé, Odeon, and Parlophone.

In 1957, Paul White joined Capitol of Canada and in 1960 established an A&R department independent of the American company to promote talent for the Canadian market. The division found native talent such as Anne Murray and EMI musicians from other countries. Beginning in 1962, Capitol of Canada issued albums by British musicians such as Cliff Richard, Helen Shapiro and Frank Ifield. They accepted the Beatles long before the American company. By 1967, they were distributing non-EMI labels such as 20th Century Fox, Buena Vista Records, Disneyland, and Pickwick. The company was renamed Capitol Records-EMI of Canada in 1974, before the EMI Music Canada name was adopted in 1993. EMI Music Canada was absorbed into Universal Music Canada in 2012. In 2016, Universal Music Canada donated the EMI Music Canada archives to the University of Calgary.

Other countries
Capitol Latin focuses on Latin music artists in Latin America and the United States. It was founded in 1989 as EMI Latin and was renamed to Capitol Latin in 2009. Capitol Latin was merged with Universal Music Latin Entertainment in 2013.

Capitol Records of Mexico was founded in the 60s decade by Capitol Records, years before Capitol belonged to EMI, when EMI purchased Capitol, the record company was called EMI Capitol of México until later it became EMI's local company, EMI Music Mexico. The label no longer exists and its catalog belongs to Universal Music Mexico.

Capitol Music Germany was founded by EMI Music Germany and inherited most of EMI's German artists catalog. In 2013, Capitol Germany was acquired by Universal and merged with UMG's Vertigo Berlin domestic division. The new label is called Vertigo/Capitol.

Capitol Music Group Sweden was relaunched in 2015 after UMG rebranded the Lionheart Music Group label. It originally existed as a division of EMI Music Sweden during the 1990s and mid-2000s. EMI's Swedish offices were included in the Parlophone Label Group sale and were acquired by Warner Music Group, which owns the Capitol Sweden's back catalog.

In France, Capitol Label Services (formerly Capitol Music France) exists as a division of Universal Music France, and bears the 1970s Capitol "C" logo.

title: Capitol Records