One of History’s Unusual Pairings: Chief Justice Swearing in Obama
Barack Obama will be sworn in today by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., a man whose confirmation to the high court he once opposed as a U.S. senator.
The New York Times calls the event one of history’s unusual swearing-in pairings. Roger Taney swore in Abraham Lincoln four years after writing the Dred Scott pro-slavery decision. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist swore in Bill Clinton a week after the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case against the president. And Rehnquist swore in George W. Bush six weeks after the high court decision that ended Al Gore’s quest for the presidency.
The Times contrasts the two men’s backgrounds. Both were on Harvard Law Review, Roberts as managing editor and Obama as president. After law school, Roberts took a more traditional path, clerking for a federal appeals court judge and then Rehnquist. He went on to work at the Justice Department and a large law firm.
Obama, on the other hand, was a community organizer and law professor before he went into politics.
Yet both men “will be very much entwined with each other’s future,” the Times notes. The Washington Post makes a similar observation in an article about the two men, saying their two careers will become “intertwined.” Both articles say any appointments that Obama makes to the court will likely be more liberal than Roberts.
The Times goes on to note that when the two men met last week, they were “dwarfed by a huge portrait of Chief Justice William Howard Taft—the only president ever to become a Supreme Court justice. Even if President-elect Obama were to serve two terms, he would be only 55 when he left the White House. Is it completely implausible to suppose that the Roberts Court lies in this onetime constitutional law teacher’s future in more ways than one?”
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