Justice Roberts to Preside at Obama Swearing-In

WASHINGTON â€" President Obama's inaugural planning committee will announce this morning that â€" surprise! â€" Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. will deliver the oath of office to Mr. Obama when he is sworn in for a second term later this month.
Most Americans (including this correspondent) simply assume the chief justice always delivers the oath. In fact, the president gets to pick who will swear him in, and Mr. Obama has selected the chief justice to deliver not one, but two, oaths to him: first in a private ceremony at the White House at noon on Sunday, Jan. 20, the constitutionally mandated date and hour for the swearing-in, and again as part of the public inaugural festivities scheduled for Monday, Jan. 21.
“I will be honored to again stand on the inaugural platform and take part in this important American tradition,'' Mr. Obama said in an announcement the planners will release later this morning. “I look forward to having Chief Justice John Roberts administer my oath of office as we gather to celebrate not just a president or a vice president, but the strength and determination of the American people.”
The ceremonies will mark the second time the chief justice has delivered back-to-back oaths to the president. During Mr. Obama's 2009 inauguration, Chief Justice Roberts flubbed the 35-word oath, prompting the president to misstate it as well. The two later redid the swearing-in privately at the White House, out of abundance of caution, the White House said then.
The tradition of chief justices administering the presidential oat h began in 1797, when Oliver Ellsworth swore in John Adams. But over time, there have been exceptions to the unwritten rule. In 1923, President Calvin Coolidge took the oath from his father, a notary public, in the wake of the death of President Warren G. Harding. But when questions were raised about the propriety of the ceremony, Mr. Harding retook the oath from a federal judge.
And on Nov. 22, 1963, the day John F. Kenn edy was assassinated, Lyndon Johnson was sworn in aboard Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas by a federal judge, Sarah T. Hughes, who became the first woman to deliver the oath of office to a president.