Chief Justice John Roberts has administered the presidential oath of office to Barack Obama for a second time, just to be on the safe side.
The unusual step came after Roberts flubbed the oath a bit on Tuesday, causing Obama to repeat the wording differently than as prescribed in the Constitution.
White House counsel Greg Craig said Obama took the oath from Roberts again out of an “abundance of caution.”
The chief justice and the president handled the matter privately in the Map Room on Wednesday night.
I’m going to trust that they got the wording right this time.
For another dose of the train wreck Roberts unleashed during the inauguration, check out the previous coverage on RTFA:
Here we go… more and more people are calling for a “do over” with the Presidential Oath. After looking into it, I have become convinced that it’s no big deal. Go ahead! Take the oath a second time; previous Presidents Coolidge and Arthur did.
In giving the oath, Roberts misplaced the word “faithfully,” at which point Obama paused quizzically. Roberts then corrected himself, but Obama repeated the words as Roberts initially said them.
A do-over “would take him 30 seconds, he can do it in private, it’s not a big deal, and he ought to do it just to be safe,” said Boston University constitutional scholar and Supreme Court watcher Jack Beermann. “It’s an open question whether he’s president until he takes the proper oath.”
The courts would probably never hear a challenge, and some might argue that Obama automatically took office at noon because that’s when President Bush left the office. But because the procedure is so explicitly prescribed in the Constitution, Beermann said if he were Obama’s lawyer, he would recommend retaking it, just as two previous presidents, Calvin Coolidge and Chester Arthur, did under similar circumstances.
“The Constitution says what he’s supposed to say,” Beermann said. “… It’s kind of surprising the chief justice couldn’t get it right.”
On August 2, 1923, President Harding died while on a speaking tour in California. Vice-President Coolidge was visiting his family home, which did not have electricity or a telephone, in Vermont when he received word by messenger of Harding’s death. Coolidge dressed, said a prayer, and came downstairs to greet the reporters who had assembled. His father, a notary public, administered the oath of office in the family’s parlor by the light of a kerosene lamp at 2:47 a.m. on August 3, 1923; Coolidge then went back to bed. Coolidge returned to Washington the next day, and was re-sworn by Justice A. A. Hoehling of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, as there was some confusion over whether a state notary public had the authority to administer the presidential oath.
President Arthur took the oath of office twice. The first time was just past midnight at his Lexington Avenue residence on September 20 by New York Supreme Court justice John R. Brady; the second time was upon his return to Washington two days later.
It appears that there is precedent for the following:
1) taking the oath more than once
2) performing the oath for a private audience
On this basis, there is no downside for Obama to take the oath a second time. John Roberts, on the other hand, will forever be remembered as “that guy” who became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court without memorizing the constitution. Of course, that’s basically a joke: Roberts obviously knows the US Constitution, and there’s almost no chance he’s unaware of Coolidge’s and Arthur’s re-swearing of the Oath of Office.
Is it even conceivable that Roberts was attempting to have Obama swear a similar, but inaccurate, oath as a precedent for some later action? In this scenario, Roberts, knowing full well that previous presidents have re-sworn the oath to avoid some catastrophic technicality, would also be aware that Obama could trivially reswear the oath, but in this scenario, Obama didn’t do so. An open question: what could this kind of “set up” be building towards?
Even if you didn’t vote in 2008, there’s a good chance you watched the Presidential Inauguration. As far as magical incantations are concerned, the Presidential Oath of Office is the extra-special sentence that must be uttered. Doubtless, there are people in the frantic fringe who believe that if these words aren’t spoken in a specific way, then Obama must not be the US President.
There are many different oaths that presidents have sworn over the years, and no president has been faithful to the real oath for a long time. Article II section 1 of the US Constitution states that the following is the original oath:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
The original wording is a curiosity and little more, by this point. I won’t discuss whether or not it is a good sign, but the oath has drifted from this template. In 2009, the oath has become this trainwreck:
ROBERTS: I, Barack Hussein Obama…
OBAMA: I, Barack…
ROBERTS: … do solemnly swear…
OBAMA: I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear…
ROBERTS: … that I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully…
OBAMA: … that I will execute…
ROBERTS: … faithfully the office of president of the United States…
OBAMA: … the office of president of the United States faithfully…
ROBERTS: … and will to the best of my ability…
OBAMA: … and will to the best of my ability…
ROBERTS: … preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
OBAMA: … preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
ROBERTS: So help you God?
OBAMA: So help me God.
ROBERTS: Congratulations, Mr. President.
I interpret Roberts’ oath as being highly politicized, including Roberts forgetting the word “faithfully”, and phrasing “so help you god?” as a question instead of a statement. Just a note: the phrase “so help me god” is not strictly in the oath, according to the US Constitution.
This is a strange tact, and I don’t like it. Obama had to prompt Roberts to be faithful to the word-ordering in US Constitution, which is pretty weak performance from the Chief Justice. As much as I want to be beyond political in-fighting, we can’t have the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court going wacky-activist, can we?
Section 1. The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.
In other words, the old president is out, and the new president is in, all according to a time trigger, and not contingent on the utterance of a specific oath. Yes, it was different from the wording in Article II, but we’ve been comfortable with adding “so help me god” for years, and this situation isn’t that exceptional…
I’ll even grant Roberts a pass on not memorizing the US Constitution, but in doing so, I will give Obama extra props for being vigilant about certain words being out of order. [/UPDATE]
A divided Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that drug evidence found during an unlawful arrest arising from a computer error about a warrant could be used at trial against the defendant.
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When police mistakes that lead to an unlawful search arise from “negligence … rather than systematic error or reckless disregard of constitutional requirements,” evidence need not be kept from trial, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 5-4 majority in the case from Alabama. He was joined by the four other conservative justices: Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
The four liberal justices – Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Stephen Breyer – dissented. They said that because the search violated the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, the evidence should have been excluded.
“The most serious impact of the court’s holding will be on innocent persons wrongfully arrested based on erroneous information carelessly maintained in a computer database,” Ginsburg wrote for the dissenters. She cited findings from the Electronic Privacy Information Center that government databases are rife with errors.
The Roberts majority focused on the societal costs of excluding drugs and other evidence seized. The court enhanced officers’ ability to use evidence by arguing that an unlawful arrest was not reckless or deliberate.
Oooooookay. At least we can put an end to the argument, “if you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about.”
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