Article II, Section 1, Clause 8:

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:– 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.

Article II, Section 1, Clause 8 provides that the President must swear or affirm to “faithfully execute the Office of President” and “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” to the best of the President’s ability. Presidents since George Washington have reflected on the oath’s significance and the burden it places on the President. In his second inaugural address, Washington declared that a violation of the presidential oath would occasion not only “constitutional punishment,” but “the upbraidings of all who are now witnesses of the present solemn ceremony.” 1 Of the oath, Justice Joseph Story wrote: “[t]here is little need of commentary . . . . No man can well doubt the propriety of placing a president of the United States under the most solemn obligations to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution.” 2

The Constitution requires many officials to swear oaths or affirmations,3 but the presidential oath in Article II is unique because it prescribes verbatim the language an official must use. Government officials generally must swear an oath to “support” the Constitution, but the Constitution does not demand any exact language.4 Because Article II provides a verbatim presidential oath, misadministration of the oath might elicit questions as to the President’s legitimacy. For example, while President Barack Obama re-took the oath after Chief Justice John Roberts mistakenly reordered words in the oath’s text,5 President Herbert Hoover declined to do so, believing such mistakes to be inconsequential.6 Many presidents have appended the phrase “so help me God” to the presidential oath;7 this phrase has been included in statutorily defined oaths since 1789, but is not required of the President.8

Although Article II sets forth the text of the presidential oath, it omits other details, including who shall administer the oath and when and where the oath shall be administered. By common practice, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court administers the oath at a President’s inauguration. The practice of receiving the oath publicly began with George Washington’s inauguration. A joint committee of Congress appointed to organize the inauguration emphasized the importance of having the oath “administered to the President in the most public manner” such that “the greatest number of the people in the United States, and without distinction, may be witnesses to the solemnity.” 9 President John Adams was the first President to receive the oath from the Chief Justice.10 Several Vice Presidents who became President through succession were administered oaths outside the nation’s capital and by people other than the Chief Justice.11 For example, President Calvin Coolidge, who succeeded President Warren G. Harding after his death, received the oath from his father, a notary public, at his father’s residence in Vermont.12

The presidential oath’s language mirrors other provisions of the Constitution—such as the President’s obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” 13 —though much of the language in the presidential oath appears nowhere else in the Constitution. The significance of the oath’s unique text has been a matter of debate for centuries. James Madison’s notes suggest that even delegates to the Federal Convention of 1787, where the Constitution was drafted, lacked a shared understanding of this language: while debating whether the text of the oath should include a promise to “preserve protect and defend the Constitution,” Delegate James Wilson of Pennsylvania suggested that the general oath required by Article VI would render such text unnecessary.14

Footnotes

1

Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States, S. Doc. No. 101-10, at 6 (1st Sess. 1989) [hereinafter Inaugural Addresses].

2

3 Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 1482 (1833).

3

U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 3.

4

Id. The Supreme Court has recognized the validity of oaths that do not use the exact language of article VI’s general oath in free speech challenges to such oaths. See Cole v. Richardson, 405 U.S. 676, 682 (1972) ( “The Court has further made clear that an oath need not parrot the exact language of the constitutional oaths to be constitutionally proper.” ). For more on free speech challenges to oaths, see .

5

E.g., Statement from White House Counsel, White House of Pres. Barack Obama, >https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/statement-white-house-counsel (Jan. 21, 2009) (observing that “there was one word out of sequence” in the oath taken by President Obama and “out of an abundance of caution . . . Chief Justice Roberts administered the oath a second time” ).

6

See Jessie Kratz, An Inaugural Blunder, U.S. Nat’l Archives, >https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2014/07/29/an-inaugural-blunder/ (July 29, 2014) (describing Chief Justice William Howard Taft’s mistake in administering the oath to President Herbert Hoover). President Hoover was not sworn in a second time.

7

See, e.g., Letters from Washington: Inauguration Day, Sacramento Daily Union (Apr. 10, 1865) (reporting the use of the phrase by President Abraham Lincoln); The New Administration, N.Y. Times (Sept. 23, 1881) (reporting the use of the phrase by President Chester A. Arthur); William H. Taft Inaugurated President, Wash. Post (Mar. 5, 1909) (reporting use of the phrase by President William Howard Taft).

8

E.g., Judiciary Act of 1789, Ch. 20, §§ 7–8, 1 Stat. 73, 76.

9

Order for Conducting the Ceremonial for the Inauguration of the President (Apr. 27, 1789), in 1 A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 50 (James D. Richardson ed., 1897); see also Inaugural Addresses, supra note 1, at 175–76 (inaugural address of President Benjamin Harrison) ( “There is no constitutional or legal requirement that the President shall take the oath of office in the presence of the people, but there is so manifest an appropriateness in the public induction to office of the chief executive officer of the nation that from the beginning of the Government the people . . . have been called to witness the solemn ceremonial.” ).

10

3rd Inaugural Ceremonies, Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, >https://www.inaugural.senate.gov/3rd-inaugural-ceremonies/. George Washington received the oath from the Chancellor of the State of New York in his first term and Associate Justice William Cushing in his second term.

11

Prior to the passage of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, whether a Vice President succeeding a President needed to take the presidential oath was unclear. President John Tyler, who succeeded President William Henry Harrison, becoming the first Vice President to assume the presidency following a President’s death in office, began the practice of swearing the presidential oath. See Edward S. Corwin, The President: Office and Powers, 1787–1957, at 54 (1957) (noting that Tyler took the presidential oath despite believing that he was qualified to act as President without taking an additional oath). See generally .

12

The Swearing-In of Calvin Coolidge, Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, >https://www.inaugural.senate.gov/swearing-in-of-coolidge/. Coolidge was purportedly administered a second oath by a Justice of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia when his Attorney General and Solicitor General expressed doubts that Coolidge’s father could lawfully administer the oath. Jim Bendat, Democracy’s Big Day: The Inauguration of Our President, 1789–2013, at 156 (2012); Tells of Coolidge and Second Oath, N.Y. Times (Feb. 3, 1932) (Justice who purportedly administered Coolidge’s second oath confirming that he did so).

13

U.S. Const. art. II, § 3.

14

2 The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, at 427 (Max Farrand ed., 1911) (Madison’s notes, Aug. 27, 1787). The text was adopted. Id.