"Challenge To Inaugural Oath and Prayers Dismissed On Standing Grounds":
So reports Religion Clause (Prof. Howard Friedman), pointing to this decision.
Related Posts (on one page):
- "Challenge To Inaugural Oath and Prayers Dismissed On Standing Grounds":
- Michael Newdow Sues Over Religious Speech at Inauguration:
Suppose the phrase "so help me God" was truly unconstitutional. Who would have to bring this suit in order to have "standing"? I can't see how anyone could ever meet this criteria in issues of general constitutionality.
All of the lawsuits to examine the hard copy of Obama's birth certificate to determine eligibility were dismissed for lack of "standing". If that does not affect pretty much every US citizen, but they have no standing nonetheless, then is it ever possible for anyone to challenge the constitutionality of most issues?
I'm not necessarily in favor of all these suits, but it seems to me that the ruling class has quite a bludgeon here to keep the average ordinary citizen from challenging it with this "standing" catch-all.
alas
alas
The president-elect as the person required to take the oath would seem to be the only one with standing, except possibly also the chief justice since he's required to administer it.
General Standing issues apart, neither would have standing here, of course, since the phrase "So help me god" is not required by the constitution, so neither the Chief nor the President(-Elect) has to say it if they don't want to.
Actually, "so help me God" is not part of the oath set forth in the Constitution, so the President- Elect is not required to state that part. Also, the Chief Justice is not required to administer the oath (no one is) under the Constitution.
I would imagine that even if the Chief Justice did that, the president would not be required to repeat those last three words if s/he didn't want to.
@Mark in Colorado: Sorry, that would have been cheating.
The worst part is Roberts had the nerve to say "So help you god?" as a question to Obama, rather than merely adding "so help me god" for Obama to simply repeat, as per the rest of the oath (repeat after me...).
I've said it before - ALL U.S. citizens should have standing to challenge any government action as unconstitutional. Article III says nothing about "standing" and while random people probably should not be allowed to sue to enforce someone else's rights when that person does not want to bring such a lawsuit themselves, to interpret Article III's "case and controversy" clause in such a way as to prevent citizens from having a remedy for any given violation of the Constitution is never what the framers had in mind. This is paticularly true with respect to government action respecting/establishing/favoring religion.
The Chief Justice has NO right to add extraneous lines to the Presidential oath of office, and any U.S. citizen should have standing to bring a pre-inauguration lawsuit to bar the CJ (or whoever intends to give the oath of office to the POTUS-elect) from adding "so help me/you god" or any other phrase not contained in the Constitution's text. If it can be shown that the oath-giver intends to add some extraneous, extra-constitutional reference to god while giving the oath of office to the president-elect, then it should be a no brainer case - the court should issue an order requiring that the oath be given as the Constitution states, word for word, with nothing added, taken out, or moved around. How could any "originalist" be against the merits of such an outcome?
It still sickens me that Roberts had the nerve to ask Obama, before the tens of millions watching, "so help YOU god?" to put Obama on the spot and make him answer a question, rather than the less disgusting recital of "so help me god" for Obama to merely repeat, as with the rest of the oath of office.
And when Obama said the oath of office out of order (thanks to Robert's inadvertent mistake), it only took 30 seconds for the right-wingers to start screaming "Obama never took the correct oath of office, so he's not really President!" ... yet they had no complaint about the extranous "so help me god" phrase.
You know, sometimes I really envy religious people. It must be nice to have no logical or rational constraints to one's own thoughts. No internal consistency, whatever feels right is right, regardless of previously held positions. 1 + 1 is two when it's convenient to be two, and it's three when it's convenient to be three. What does that feel like? I bet it's rather intoxicating.
stadning is one of the mot prudential doctrines and everyone knows it.
HOWEVER
in cases like these-after so many good and important suits have been denied using the standing doctrine-you almost like to see these wakos get a condescending lack of standing response from the courts. if the courts actually reached the merits on this issue-how fair would that be to the plaintiffs in the "faith based initiatives" case
Actually, that would be 2013 and 2017. The next two elections are in November 2012 and 2016, but the innaugration isn't until January.
So, are you outraged by the fact that all these presidents have gratuitously inserted their names into the oath? There's no provision for that in the constitutional text, not even a "state your name", just "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."
raimo1@hot.ee
Wirtschaftprobleme
Personalprobleme beim Start einer neuen Regierung sind nicht ungewöhnlich. Wenn aber mitten in einer schweren Finanzkrise der wichtigste Minister keinen Stellvertreter hat, ist dies Grund zur Sorge. Britische Zeitungen berichteten, dass ein führender Beamter des Londoner Finanzministeriums klagte, er finde in Washington niemanden, mit dem er die nächste Ministertagung der G-20-Gruppe vorbereiten könne.
Über die Ursachen der vielen Absagen gibt es bisher nur Spekulationen. Wahrscheinlich ist aber, dass das Problem nicht im Finanzministerium, sondern im Weißen Haus und im Kongress liegt. Banker sind derzeit in den USA, wie überall auf der Welt, verhasst, deshalb dürfte jeder Prominente von der Wall Street im Senat Probleme bekommen. Andererseits haben die Experten, die man jetzt braucht, meist einen Wall-Street-Hintergrund.
Präsident Obama dürfte sich des Dilemmas bewusst sein, was den Prozess der Nominierung lang und für Kandidaten potentiell schädigend macht. Paul Volcker, der frühere Notenbankchef und Berater von Obama, ließ nach Berichten amerikanischer Medien schon ein Donnerwetter los. Es sei eine "Schande", dass Geithner "dasitzt ohne einen Stellvertreter, ohne Staatssekretäre, meines Wissens auch ohne Abteilungsleiter, die für substantielle Dinge in dieser Krise verantwortlich sind".
Um... I'm pretty sure Obama knew the question was coming, and had an answer ready for it, Bruce. Even as a secularist who would prefer these references to religion excised from official ceremonies, your level of outrage seems disproportionate.
Until this century, the President didn't even repeat the oath. The person administering the oath recited it in the form of a question, "Do you [name here] solemnly swear 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?" to which the president replied "I do". The practice of repeating back the oath didn't become common until well into the 20th century.
"I do solemly swear" is no different than "I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemly swear" - they have the exact same meaning. It just says who the "I" taking the oath is. "So help me god" at the end, on the other hand, modifies and minimizes the entire oath stated immediate prior thereto. The oath of office is to protect and defend the Constitution, not to honor God, nor to protect and defend the Bible/Torah/Koran/Dianetics. Adding the candidate's name does not endorse religion. Adding "so help me god" does endorse religion.
Additionally, claiming that it's "judeo-christian" does not legitimize it. There's no such thing as "judeo-christian" ... that's a political spin word meant to placate both jews and christians. Within a few years we'll probably be talking about "judeo-islamo-christian" so as to make a (pathetic) attempt at placating everybody. It's a load of BS. When an evangelical Christian Chief Justice is asking a Christian President-elect "So help you god?" there is nothing "judeo-islamo" about it - it's 100% Christian and all non-christians are left out. As most christians would say, the jews and muslims and other non-christians can go fuck themselves because (despite clear authority to the contary, they believe this is a "christian country" founded on "christian principles." The framers of the Constitution, from Madison to Jefferson, made it abundantly clear that such a notion is utterly false. But facts are irrelevant to religious people... that's what "faith" is all about. Faith is "Knowing" with a capital K that America was founded to be a Christian country despite clear and unequivocal writings by the framers indicating that it is not, nor was it ever meant to be a "Christian country."
Um... I'm pretty sure Obama knew the question was coming, and had an answer ready for it, Bruce. Even as a secularist who would prefer these references to religion excised from official ceremonies, your level of outrage seems disproportionate.
I disagree. Watch it again. I think Obama expected Roberts to either say "So help me god" for him to merely repeat, or for Roberts to simply stop talking at the end of the oath, at which point Obama would take it upon himself to add "So help me god." I do not think Obama expected Roberts to have asked him "So help YOU god?????!" The oath-giver is simply supposed to recite the oath, phrase by phrase, for the POTUS-elect to repeat each phrase. The oath-giver does not add extraneous questions to the end of the oath. It's unheard of. And when the question calls for a de facto affirmation of the Evangelical "Bush" Christianity of Justice Roberts, there are serious Establishment Clause issues... issues which should not be left unaddressed due to the excuse of "standing."
Article III "standing" is the favorite bastard child of the Evangelical government official who intends to use his government position to force his religious beliefs accross the country. They're the ones who created, delineated, and now enforce "standing" to make sure no U.S. Citizen has the ability to go into court to get them to stop using government to spread/benefit religion.
Sorry... you don't have standing to contest the annual "Jesus Day" holiday. Sorry, you don't have standing to contest the 500 foot tall gold Jesus, paid for by taxpayer dollars, erected outside the courthouse. Sorry, you don't have standing to contest tax breaks for those who give money to "officially recognized religious organizations" (i.e. Christian Churches but not Scientology's Lord Xenu Thetan-Testing E-Meter stress-relief centers).
U.S. Citizens should ALWAYS have standing to challenge government action as unconstitutional, regardless of the actual/direct/measurable effect of the constitutional violation on the particular Citizen. Keep in mind, there is no such thing as a de minimis violation of the Constitution. As such, we should not act like there is.
So you think the President can add "So help me god" at the end, but the person administering the oath can't add "So help me god" even when the President specifically asks him to, as Obama did in this case?
I'll also point out that there is no evidence that Obama asked Roberts to add anything about god helping him, whether as a statement to repeat or as a question to answer.
When they re-did the oath of office, there was no Bible and no god-stuff. That's a prime reason why there was no recording of the "second" oath of office. They wanted to do it right, do it quick, and do it as the Constitutional calls for - no extraneous Godstuff. No Bible. No "So help me God." That's the way to do it. The president should not begin the first seconds of his administration by placating to the faction of the irrational.
Obama's father was one of 5 or 6 black atheists to ever live on Planet Earth, and Obama's mother was a nondenominational secularist. I have no doubt that Obama is a pragmatic agnostic. He joins churches in the communities in which he lives to further his goals - as a community organizer in Chicago it was absolutely necessary to be a member of one of the local churches. After "sampling" all of them, he settled on Reverend Wright's church (a mistake in hindsight). Now that he's in DC he's doing the same thing - finding an acceptable church to attend. But for pragmatic reasons, not because he wants to go. Obama has mentioned "nonbelievers" twice in his first 2 months in office - which is two times more than all the previous 43 US Presidents have mentioned nonbelievers.
Obama is the last guy who would ask the Chief Justice to interrogate him about whether his presidentail oath of office is made subservient to "Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior, Praise Be His Name and Peace Be Upon Him, Amen." If you want that sort of garbage go live in Iran or Saudi Arabia. Jesus Akbar lalalalalalalalalalalalalalala!
Obama's request that the Chief Justice add 'so help me god' to the oath was fairly widely reported. See this CNN story for example.
Wrong on two counts. There was an audio recording of the second oath (see this Youtube video of MSNBC's broadcast of it, for example). Second, both Obama and Roberts say 'so help me god' at the end.
The Chief Justice of the United States obviously lied in his affidavit. After all,what's a little perjury when he is trying to "stroke his religious boner."
I mean, it's not like there would be any witnesses.
I am not entirely sure that is the case. Religious people worry about what will happen to them (or their souls) after they die; people like you can just die "knowing" you will be food for worms and nothing else matters.
I'm not trying to be snarky (and I'm certainly not a lawyer), but isn't "random people probably should not be allowed to sue to enforce someone else's rights when that person does not want to bring such a lawsuit themselves" one of the main justifications for why courts require standing?
Also, haven't "standing" doctrines evolved from the English common law and weren't they, or a version of them, generally accepted as standard judicial practice in 1789?
Except that, in the big cases it's more like "random people shouldn't be allowed to sue to enforce everyone's rights"; In practice, the courts won't let ANY individual sue when a constitutional violation effects everybody, rather than a very limited class of people.
Standing has reasonable application, but in these big cases, it's little more than an excuse to refuse to take on issues the courts want to avoid.
Even though I'm not sure this outcome is unavoidable given the text, in practice subsection 4a means that people are regularly filing a "Verfassungsbeschwerde" = constitutional complaint because they're angry about Germany ratifying the new European Treaty, or about a law authorising the government to shoot down civilian airliners in case of a 9/11 scenario, or about German soldiers working with NATO in Turkey for the benefit of the war in Iraq.
I'll accept Newdow having standing if I can in turn sue him for abusing the Court system and annoying the shit out of me (also a non-believer) for his anti-religion crusade.
Michael Newdow had filed essentially the same suit at Bush's inauguration with a similar result. The court said that the result of Newdow's previous lawsuits precluded him from trying to re-litigate the same issue this time. At some point, there has to be a decision that's considered final and puts things to rest. People can't just keep suing over and over and over again over the same issue in hopes a new judge might see things a different way. Law would be chaos if that happened.
Michael Newdow had filed essentially the same suit at Bush's inauguration with a similar result. The court said that the result of Newdow's previous lawsuits precluded him from trying to re-litigate the same issue this time. At some point, there has to be a decision that's considered final and puts things to rest. People can't just keep suing over and over and over again over the same issue in hopes a new judge might see things a different way. Law would be chaos if that happened.
He annoys the shit out of me, and I'm an atheist. But "You've litigated that point before and lost." is one thing. "That law you say wasn't passed by both houses applies to everybody, so you don't have any standing to complain." is quite another.
Too often standing is used as an excuse to make sure certain issues NEVER get their day in court, not to keep them from coming back over and over.
If you have a comment about spelling, typos, or format errors, please e-mail the poster directly rather than posting a comment.
Comment Policy: We reserve the right to edit or delete comments, and in extreme cases to ban commenters, at our discretion. Comments must be relevant and civil (and, especially, free of name-calling). We think of comment threads like dinner parties at our homes. If you make the party unpleasant for us or for others, we'd rather you went elsewhere. We're happy to see a wide range of viewpoints, but we want all of them to be expressed as politely as possible.
We realize that such a comment policy can never be evenly enforced, because we can't possibly monitor every comment equally well. Hundreds of comments are posted every day here, and we don't read them all. Those we read, we read with different degrees of attention, and in different moods. We try to be fair, but we make no promises.
And remember, it's a big Internet. If you think we were mistaken in removing your post (or, in extreme cases, in removing you) -- or if you prefer a more free-for-all approach -- there are surely plenty of ways you can still get your views out.