I Do Solemnly Swear: the President's Constitutional Oath. It's Meaning and Importance in the History of Oaths

I Do Solemnly Swear: The President's Constitutional Oath. It's Meaning and Importance in the History of Oaths. By Matthew A. Pauley. New York: University Press of America, 2000, 260 pages.

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." This oath, according to Matthew Pauley, has been unduly ignored in studies of the American presidency. He argues that examining the presidential oath is key to understanding how the American presidency has endured historical challenges, remaining relatively stable and secure. In fact, Pauley contends that the "swearing in of a President of the United States may be said to provide, figuratively, the keystone of that nation's governing arch ... the President is the keystone because he is sworn to 'preserve, protect, and defend' the whole. Only he must stand before the American people and solemnly swear to safeguard the Constitution." Scholars of the presidency thus do their subject a disservice when they consider the oath a pure formality devoid of historical relevance and modern importance. Pauley blames this view on pluralist notions of government that he believes so dominate modern political science that constitutionally prescribed mandates, like the oath of office, are understood as irrelevant.

To rectify this omission, Pauley asks two main research questions: Is the presidential oath important enough to be taken seriously?; and, What does the presidential oath mean? The answers are garnered from the book's three main parts. The first section provides a review of various social contract theorists' considerations of oaths. It goes on to describe how oaths were used in ancient Greece and Rome. Each are presented to illustrate the importance of oaths in Western political thought and state building.

Part two embarks on a comparative case study of the American and French revolutions, or "social contract moments," designed to demonstrate the importance of the American residential oath in securing the office's durability and peaceful transfer of power. The review of the Founders' considerations on a presidential oath is a highlight of the book. Pauley convincingly argues that many--particularly George Washington--considered the oath much more than a formality. Both the importance many Founders placed on taking the oath publicly, and how it instills in each president's conscience a duty to uphold and defend the Constitution, is discussed. The fact that the presidential oath is the only one included in the Constitution, and has remained the same over the country's existence, is also presented as testament to its importance. By comparison, the French prescribed a multitude of ever changing oaths with different locus of legitimacy and this is argued to have undermined governmental stability.

The final section examines three potential crises of American political development--nullification, succession, and post-reconstruction--and how presidents relied on, and felt bound by, the oath for particular courses of action. In each case the oath is argued to serve the president well--from Jackson's rather uncharacteristic rejection of state's supreme rights to Lincoln's suspension of certain liberties in order to preserve the Union. Discussion of oaths by political scientists of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries is also presented.

These sections allow Pauley to answer his research questions in the affirmative. Based on the historical review of oaths in ancient nation state building, more modern times, and philosophical considerations of oaths, he concludes the presidential oath is not only to be taken seriously, but is necessary to understand the continued success of the American presidency. The oath engenders commitment to a government's form and principles amongst citizens. Thus, it is key to state building. Based on the discussion of the oath at critical times in American political development, Pauley concludes that it effectively ties the presidential conscious to upholding and defending the Constitution. Here, he makes what is the book's most provocative argument. He contends that the oath sets up a dual function for the president: perfecter and defender. In the perfecter role the president is bound to exercise no more than his given powers to make the country more free, more just, and thus more perfect. In the defender role, the oath places preservation of the Union above all other duties. In this role, he argues, the oath allows the president near absolute power.

This book has significant strengths. The discussion of the Framers and the necessity many of them placed on a presidential oath is a convincing piece of historical analysis. Similarly, the inquiry into how various presidents understood and employed the oath at times of national crisis is of considerable interest. This treatment left me convinced that many presidents' view the oath of office as much more than a formality and, like the book argues, the oath imparts or reinforces a personalized conscience in American presidents. The questions posed in the text surrounding presidential obligation are also meaningful contributions. Pauley uses the literature to ask whether a president violates the oath when he enforces a law he believes unconstitutional and whether the president violates the oath when he breaks international law. Both questions have been asked before but, in the context of a text examining the American presidential oath, the questions take on different nuances. How oaths foster loyalty towards newly created democratic governments following revolutionary periods is also worth pursuing.

Despite these strengths, and the convincing case made that presidential oath merits scholarly attention, some of the book's conclusions are overstated. I am not convinced that the oath is the causal agent in our relatively stable and adaptive executive. A contributing factor YES, but causal agent NO. Political culture, strategic decision-making, institutional form, historical precedent, and political activism are all too important here for the oath of office to be assigned such a definitive role. Too little attention is also paid to the symbolic nature of the oath. This differs from "mere formality" argument Pauley rightfully, and convincingly, rejects. Considering the symbolic nature of taking the oath of office recognizes how it bestows legitimacy and, as our most recent national election attests, has the effect of quelling or at least partly silencing debate over electoral results. This role strikes me as important and suggests that the modern view Americans take of the oath would have been an informative addition to the text. Methodologically, some discussion of why particular periods, societies, or philosophers were chosen also would have aided the discussion. The same decisions for inclusion or rejection may have been made but, without a clear rubric for inclusion, we are left to wonder why only those who considered oaths important in state building, or societies that actually relied upon them, are included. How has non-reliance on oaths influence state building or the success of the executive? Finally, the conclusion that the oath allows the president to abandon various checks and balances to preserve the Union, indeed that handing the Union over intact to the next president is of such primacy that particular checks and balances may be abandoned, needs considerably more examination. Nowhere does the Constitution allow the president to abandon the checks and balances that it outlines and this presentation did not convince me that the oath afforded the president this luxury.

These issues merit attention but it is important to make clear that Pauley's book is worth consideration. He makes a true contribution by engaging the presidential oath of office on analytic terms and demanding that serious scholars of the presidency and state development give it more sustained attention. Both upper-level undergraduate classes or master's courses on the American presidency or the American political tradition would benefit from the arguments and discussion presented in this book.

Reviewed by: Erin O'Brien, Kent State University

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