Planners Look to Precedents if Inauguration Day Falls on Sunday

31 December 2012

Dwight D. Eisenhower, right, takes the oath of office in a private ceremony in the East Room of the White House on Sunday, January 20, 1957.

Only six times in U.S. history has the constitutionally mandated date for a presidential inauguration fallen on a Sunday. January 20, 2013, will be the seventh time, and following historical precedent, the public ceremony will be held at the U.S. Capitol on Monday, January 21. And, in a tradition that dates back to 1917, the White House will likely arrange a private swearing-in before noon on January 20, 2013, according to the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, which plans inaugural activities.

The 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which changed the beginning of a presidential term from March 4 to January 20, was ratified in 1933, and took effect for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s second term in 1937.

The first time an inauguration fell on a Sunday was in 1821 for President James Monroe’s second swearing-in. Monroe decided, after consulting the Supreme Court, to hold the public ceremony on Monday since “courts and other public institutions were not open on Sunday.” There was no private swearing-in on March 4, the date the previous term expired.

In 1849, the second time Inauguration Day fell on a Sunday, President-elect Zachary Taylor followed the precedent set by President Monroe and had the oath of office administered Monday, March 5, at the public ceremony.

Breaking the practice of both Presidents Monroe and Taylor, the presidential oath was administered privately to President Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House Red Room on Saturday, March 3, 1877, and repeated publicly at a ceremony on the East Front of the Capitol on Monday, March 5.

In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson was the first president to take the oath of office on a Sunday. It was administered privately on Sunday, March 4, in the President’s Room of the U.S. Capitol by Chief Justice Edward D. White, and witnessed by first lady Edith Bolling Wilson, who remembered the event in a diary entry. Following the precedent set by President Monroe, the public ceremony was held on Monday, March 5.

Both Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, in 1957 and 1985 respectively, took the oath of office in private ceremonies at the White House on Sunday, January 20. On Monday, January 21, both presidents took the oath in public ceremonies at the U.S. Capitol. President Eisenhower’s was on the East Front and President Reagan’s was moved indoors to the Capitol Rotunda due to extremely cold weather.

In his 2009 inauguration as president, Barack Obama actually took the oath of office twice. The presidential oath as administered to Obama during his public swearing-in ceremony on Tuesday, January 20, 2009, strayed slightly from the oath of office prescribed in the U.S. Constitution, which led to its being administered again the next evening.