Who is the oath of office administered by

The oath reads:. I do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

While tradition dictates that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court administers the oath of office to the President-elect, a variety of officials have administered the oath to Vice Presidents. The president pro tempore of the Senate administered the oath to the first three Vice Presidents—John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Aaron Burr—and to many Vice Presidents from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Some Vice Presidents took the oath from the Chief Justice.

On some occasions, the outgoing Vice President administered the oath to the Vice President-elect. Capitol, prior to the swearing-in of the President. During the morning, the galleries of the Senate chamber would begin to fill with family members and friends of Senators, Representatives, and the incoming and outgoing Presidents and Vice Presidents.

Members of the House, the diplomatic corps, cabinet members, and members of the Supreme Court would enter next. Finally, the Vice President-elect, the President, and the President-elect would enter the crowded chamber, which would then grow quiet to hear the Vice President deliver their farewell address before gaveling the session closed.

At noon the doorkeeper often had to push the clock hands back to fulfill the noon adjournment requirement , the Vice President-elect would take the oath of office, and then deliver their Inaugural address. Angered by those who refused this symbolic act during a wartime crisis, and determined to prevent the eventual return of prewar southern leaders to positions of power in the national government, congressional hard-liners eventually succeeded by in making the Test Oath mandatory for all members.

The Senate then revised its rules to require that members not only take the Test Oath orally, but also that they "subscribe" to it by signing a printed copy. This condition reflected a wartime practice in which military and civilian authorities required anyone wishing to do business with the federal government to sign a copy of the Test Oath.

The current practice of newly sworn senators signing individual pages in an elegantly bound oath book dates from this period. As tensions cooled during the decade following the Civil War, Congress enacted private legislation permitting particular former Confederates to take only the second section of the oath. An public law prescribed this alternative oath for "any person who has participated in the late rebellion, and from whom all legal disabilities arising therefrom have been removed by act of Congress.

In , a new generation of lawmakers quietly repealed the first section of the Test Oath, leaving intact today's moving affirmation of constitutional allegiance. At the beginning of a new term of office, senators-elect take their oath of office from the presiding officer in an open session of the Senate before they can begin to perform their legislative activities.

From the earliest days, the senator-elect—both the freshman and the returning veteran—has been escorted down the aisle by another senator to take the oath from the presiding officer. Customarily, the other senator from the senator-elect's state performs that ritual.

Occasionally, the senator-elect chooses a senator from another state, either because the same-state colleague is absent or because the newly elected senator has sharp political differences with that colleague. Such public displays of these differences do not go unnoticed by journalists. A ban on photography in the Senate chamber has led senators to devise an alternative way of capturing this highly symbolic moment in their Senate careers.

In earlier times, the Vice President invited newly sworn senators and their families into his Capitol office for a reenactment for home-state photographers. Beginning in the late s, following the restoration of the Old Senate Chamber to its appearance at the time it went out of service in , reenactment ceremonies have been held in that deeply historical setting, resplendent in crimson and gold.