The former president who administered two presidential oaths
William Howard Taft moved from the White House to the Supreme Court’s highest seat: after serving as president, he became chief justice. That made him an unusual witness to the next generation of presidents. As chief justice, he administered the oath to Calvin Coolidge in 1925 and Herbert Hoover in 1929.
The setting mattered. The oath is a brief promise to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution, but its public administration marks the formal beginning of a president’s elected term. Having a former president deliver it gave the ceremony a visible link between administrations—one leader handing the office’s responsibilities to another, though not literally transferring power by administering the oath.
Coolidge had already taken the oath once
Taft’s oath-taking for Coolidge was not the moment Coolidge first became president. When President Warren G. Harding died in 1923, Coolidge, then vice president, took the oath at his family home in Vermont. His father, a notary public, administered it. Coolidge took the presidential oath again after winning election in his own right, with Taft officiating at the 1925 inauguration.
The distinction shows why the oath can appear at more than one turning point: succession after a president’s death and the start of a newly elected term are separate occasions. The Constitution requires the president to take the oath, but does not require the chief justice to administer it. That role became a familiar custom, not a constitutional job reserved to the court.
Taft’s appearances therefore joined two chapters of his own career as well as two presidencies: he had once held the office Coolidge and Hoover were entering, and now presided over the court that would serve during their administrations. The former president was not returning to political power; he was helping mark its orderly passage.
