His wife, Marie Louise Gorsuch, held the family bible as her husband was administered the oath of office during a roughly 10-minute ceremony. Their two daughters were present, as were Justice Antonin Scalia's widow and all of the justices and their spouses, with the exception of Justice Stephen Breyer.
A public ceremony will be held at the White House at 11 a.m. ET and Justice Anthony Kennedy will administer the second oath of office to Gorsuch. Trump and all of the justices are expected to be at the White House later today for the second ceremony.
Then Justice Anthony Kennedy administers the judicial oath to his former law clerk in a public ceremony in the White House Rose Garden....
April 10, 2017
Swearing up a storm... over-swearing.
"Gorsuch was sworn in behind closed doors at the Supreme Court building, the first of two oaths he will take today."
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Just waiting for the tears.
It must have been satisfying to swear in your former mentee. (I think that is a word.)
-XC
Once sworn, always sworn.
I expect that Schumer will show up with his gang and chant so loud no one hears a word. And CNN will then give Schumer 30 minutes of TV speech time.
Where was Breyer? He is always yapping on the bench with his convoluted and compound questions. Not shy then.
If once isn't enough, then a million times is not enough. It gets silly after a while, which undermines the solemnity.
This reminds me of the old joke about the American political system--the United States really only has one political party, but in typical American extravagance, we have two of them.
Is this double-swearing normal? And if not the reason for it, which we don't know yet, may be interesting.
Might be Breyer's silent protest in support of Garland. Bad form, if so. Cry baby.
Which one is the real one?
You can stream the White House ceremony here.
Starting soon.
I chose 2 but might have chosen the last but did not look that far.
Swearing him in can't happen too many time for me.
The next swearing in will be even more fun.
These are not the same oaths. The 1st is the Constitutional Oath, required for all federal office holders. The 2nd is the judicial oath, which is limited to judges and justices. I don't see any harm in the two different oaths being given in two different locations.
It took two swearings to banish the specter of Garland. The first neutralized the aura and the second secured Gorsuch's authority.
If there had been only one swearing-in, the news corporations would have been legally and spiritually and ethically obligated to refer to all relevant activities as coming from the Merrick Garland Chair (featuring Neil Gorsuch).
Swearing will, of course, continue by many others over coming years.
Dkwalser is correct.
I understand the private oath at the Supreme Court with family and Mrs. Scalia... but what's the point of the two different oath ceremonies at the White House?
They started doing the Constitutional Oath in private because so many of them were keeping their fingers crossed.
Speaking of over-swearing, In the Loop (2009) is good.
Over-swearing is a big part of the plot.
The Gorsuch thing might well have come from the same inclinations. Mid-level bureaucrats run everything, including starting wars.
Ghost Town (2008) and Carnage (2011) were also good, three surprises among the dregs I've been getting recently.
Carnage ends rather suddenly, drama-wise.
Breyer in the Rose Garden.
Two ceremonies defeats the logical point.
The oath ceremony makes sure that you seriously take on a responsibility, and are not merely saying stuff that you'd say in ordinary conversation. It's a legal check.
Still there are infelicities, as Austin points out. You might be saying it in a play, which the second ceremony is. It doesn't count, but without any legal check. It's sort of undermining of the first ceremony.
I like the "So, help me Allah!" part.
Hillary is free (at last) to comment, but I suspect she will remain silent.
Blued
You have to stop deranged Lefties--like those that frequent this blog--from doing him physical harm. He's already sworn in. You can open up with quad-.50s later, if you need to.
It's great that all the Justices and spouses show up. And Mrs. Scalia.
They need some publicly expressed institutional solidarity, and this is one of the few chances they get to show it. The sitting Justices are showing respect for the new nominee and for the process that selected him (and them) for the job.
And for once they get to be on television, all together.
I hope the security is good.
I assume Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer were not invited. They would have declined anyway. Because The Base.
David Begley said...
Might be Breyer's silent protest in support of Garland. Bad form, if so. Cry baby.
Or he could be ill. Nothing painful, debilitating or life threatening but enough to make him want to spend his last years with his family without the hard work and stress the Court. Always hopeful.
"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true."
Hey, the Dems are swearing too.
All the Justices are at the White House ceremony.
Trump is talking a long time!
Praising Justice Kennedy now, saying he's praised by everyone. That's not what I've heard, but why not extol him. It's a feel-good ceremony.
Kennedy's talking now: "There are 2 oaths that a member of the judiciary must take."
This is the "judicial oath."
They should never have raised that second visibly big flag on Surinachi either.
The Marines are just publicity hounds.
So what it's for TV and shows good leadership by DJT. He has earned it.
Gorsuch pronounces his own name "GOR-SUCH" — saying "such" like the word "such," much more emphatically than I have heard it said by others.
He's all oathed up now.
Oathed but not loathed, except by some.
Gorsuch is speaking.
He wishes he could mention all the names of those he thanks. "But you know who you are."
I sure hope Roberts was reading from a script when he gave the initial oath, or Gorsuch might have been sworn into a different position.
I didn't hear Leo Leonard's name. He's the executive director of the Federalist Society. He made the potential nominee list for SCOTUS.
I swear I am enjoying this. Yeah, yeah, go ahead and tsk, tsk.
Make him do the Sicilian blood oath. Imagine if SCOTUS judges had to abide by Omerta.
"I made him an offer he couldn't refuse".
Jeffrey Toobin's New Yorker article on Leo Leonard's influence on Supreme Court picks—now that
Gorsuch has been confirmed, Leo is responsible, to a considerable extent, for a third of the Supreme Court.
http://bit.ly/2oioKoM
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/17/the-conservative-pipeline-to-the-supreme-court
Can you serve on the Court part time, and do movies too? I swear he is too perfect to waste his persona on paper work. He could give Thomas his power of attorney
To cast his vote for him
while filming out of town.
This is a big effin' deal
It's a fake cover on the family bible. Actually it is naked pictures of his wife at the lake.
DKWalser: "These are not the same oaths. The 1st is the Constitutional Oath, required for all federal office holders. The 2nd is the judicial oath, which is limited to judges and justices. I don't see any harm in the two different oaths being given in two different locations."
We won't know if this long standing and standard operating practice is still constitutional until the lefty crazies on the 9th Circuit chime in.
Althouse: "Trump is talking a long time!
Praising Justice Kennedy now, saying he's praised by everyone. That's not what I've heard, but why not extol him. It's a feel-good ceremony"
Apparently politics has broken out during a swearing in ceremony in the Rose Garden which fulfills a huge campaign promise and the administration wants maximum time to drive that point home.
Re: David:
It's great that all the Justices and spouses show up. And Mrs. Scalia.
It's nice that she was invited, but I have to say, while I am not exactly sympatico with American democratic republican sensibilities, I do think there's something rather anti-democratic (or perhaps anti-republican) in the way seats on the high Court or in Congress are thought of as "the Scalia seat" (on the Court) or "the Kennedy seat" (in the Senate). It's just a public office, to be filled by a functionary. There's nothing magical about it, such that it should the retain the political or ideological impression left by the buttocks of its previous holder.
"there's something rather anti-democratic (or perhaps anti-republican) in the way seats on the high Court or in Congress are thought of as "the Scalia seat" (on the Court) or "the Kennedy seat" (in the Senate)."
"It's the people's seat" has been the rejoinder to that, even though the rejoinder is at best only partially true. Good luck in he future having no jews, no women or no blacks. I am delighted to have qualified persons of any gender, race etc on the court but the identity conscious world we live in has taken us beyond that. Quite recently we had 6 (I think) Roman Catholics and of course a whole taxi full of New Yorkers. That will not happen again for a very long time. It's the identity world. We are stuck with it.
Swearing him in can't happen too many times for me.
The next swearing in will be even more fun.
And ...then.....Trump and Gorsuch should do the Ren and Stimpy Happy Happy Joy Joy Dance!!!!
It couldn't get any better than that.
Have any other justices served on the court with the justice they clerked for? That has to be a source of pride for Justice Kennedy.
The secret swearing in is in Russian and carried via closed circuit tv to Putin in Moscow.
Michael K.,
Love you bro, love your books and all your interesting commentary...
but...
once in a while you are wrong and this is one of those rare times.
PHOTO OPS ARE OF THE DEVIL. A very YUUUGE part of what is wrong with this country is the constant attention to, and preening for, the optics. No no no no no damn them all. One swearing in is enough, and all that is warranted, and those who whine about it are just performing the useful service of marking themselves out as enemies of America.
Although Paddy O had me rethinking my position... LOL!
BTW Michael, did I mention to you I know someone who used to crew on your boat?
Balfegor,
I concur with your 12:19pm comment.
Make that, I concur with all the steriods and other aids, artificial and natural, that I can summon. As David has said, there are NO seats on the Supreme Court (or anywhere else) that are the property of particular blocs.
Were his arms folded? Because, if they were then we have a problem.
The right answer isn't present. The right answer is a prompt swearing-in followed by the ceremonious one for public consumption.
Eric Hines
Eleanor said...
Have any other justices served on the court with the justice they clerked for? That has to be a source of pride for Justice Kennedy.
I don't think it has ever happened. At least not since WWII. But I do think that Rhenquist, Roberts and Kagan all ended up serving as justices on the court with other justices who had been on the court when they were clerks.
So Rhenquist clerked for the great Justice Robert Jackson in 1952-53. And later served with Douglas, who had been a justice when Rehnquist was a clerk.
Roberts clerked for Rhenquist in 1980-81, then later served with Stevens, who had been a justice back in those days.
And Kagan was a clerk for Thurgood Marshall in 1987-88, then later served with Scalia and Kennedy who had both been on the Court when Marshall was there.
It is good that Chuck is talking about SCOTUS, without reference to a certain current POTUS, who seems to occupy 85-90% of the cranial real estate of our beloved commentator.
Chuck, how about those Tigers? Baseball season is upon us! Let's talk baseball!
"Roberts clerked for Rhenquist in 1980-81"
If only Rhequist had smothered him with a pillow...
So now the Captcha check keeps asking me to interpret road signs in Italian... maybe I should give up reading Vox Day, eh?
AKISMET https://akismet.com/ does a good job of filtering spam comments in Wordpress. I don't know if it works with Google blogs.
Eric Hines
Screw the Judges swearing in. Have Trump sworn in once a month for the next four to eight years.
[He's not my favorite. But he creates such lovely foaming at the mouth of those I most enjoy watching foam.]
Clarence Thomas talks about his swearing ins (swearings in?) in his autobiography, "My Grandfather's Son." CJ Rehnquist was out because his wife had died. So Thomas was given his government oath at the White House, but neither he nor his clerks could get access to any documents or systems until he took the judicial oath. Rehnquist came into the office to administer the judicial oath, so Thomas could get to work. (Like Gorsuch, Thomas was confirmed mid-term, so time was at a premium.)
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