Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will make an implicit political statement on Wednesday when she receives the oath of office from Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Harris will be the first woman to serve as vice president. Sotomayor is the first Latina woman to sit on the high court. The pairing of the two is widely seen as a celebration of the advancement of both women and minorities in politics. The message is one Harris has long pushed: In 2019, she praised Sotomayor during National Hispanic Heritage Month for “showing all our children what’s possible.”
Harris’s ceremony will feature another nod to her civil rights pedigree: The vice president-elect will take her oath of office on two Bibles, one of them previously owned by former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, an icon of liberal jurisprudence and a pioneering civil rights attorney before his quarter-century on the high court.
This is not the first time a vice president has used a swearing-in ceremony to make a political point. President-elect Joe Biden in 2013, taking the oath of office for his second term as vice president under former President Barack Obama, also asked Sotomayor to administer the oath of office. It was seen as a nod to the Hispanic community for helping Obama secure his win over Sen. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee.
And throughout history, many other presidents and vice presidents have done something similar — repurposing the pomp of the inauguration ceremony to score political, personal, or ideological points.
Here are four times executives made a personal stand.
John Quincy Adams took the oath of office on a book of laws instead of the Bible.
Adams is the only president known to have opted against swearing in on a Bible for political reasons. The sixth president, by his own recollection, in 1797 instead took his oath of office with his hand placed on a volume of law, a nod to the primacy of government’s secular role in society. He then delivered an inaugural speech in which he swore his loyalty to the Constitution above all else.
Adams, incidentally, was also the first president to be inaugurated while wearing pants. It was previously customary to take the oath in knee-length breeches.
Franklin Pierce also ditched the Bible — but for religious reasons.
Pierce, whose son was killed in a train accident shortly before he took office, in March 1853 did not place his hand over a Bible and refused to use the word “swear” in his oath — instead using the verb “affirm.” The one-term president described his decision as a form of atonement for his sins and, like Adams, swore in on a book of laws. Pierce’s wife, Jane, who suffered from depression, believed that God had punished him for winning the election and chose not to attend the ceremony.
Pierce’s vice president, William King, was the first and only vice president to be sworn into office on foreign soil. Sick with tuberculosis, he took his oath in Cuba but died before he could exercise any of his duties.
Andrew Johnson swore in as vice president while drunk.
President Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration, in March 1865, is primarily remembered for the president’s speech, which is considered by many presidential scholars to be the best of its kind. Less memorable, however, was the conduct of his incoming vice president, Andrew Johnson, who was sworn in while visibly drunk. Contemporary accounts recall that after Lincoln, Johnson delivered a long, rambling speech, which was not customary at the time. Johnson then loudly kissed the Bible on which he had sworn.
When Johnson became president, just hours after Lincoln was shot, many accounts at the time reported that Johnson was also drunk.
Obama took the oath on Lincoln’s Bible.
Obama, throughout his first campaign, often invited comparisons to Lincoln. Both men were skilled orators, and both had come of age politically in Illinois. By swearing in on Lincoln’s Bible, Obama said he hoped to draw a “powerful connection to our common past and common heritage.” Obama also swore in on Martin Luther King Jr.’s Bible, which he chose in part to recall the civil rights leader’s I Have a Dream speech.
