I don’t care one bit which hand a person places on his holy book. Do you?
And the relevant legal stuff just says they have to swear (or affirm). Not only doesn’t it mention which hand to put on the relevant book, it doesn’t say there has to be a book.
“Custom” is not law, The Flying Dutchman.
To put it another way then, is there no problem with raising your left hand for oath or affirmation ?
I’m not sure if the SCOTUS has weighed in on this, but requiring an elected official to swear in on a particular holy book would almost certainly violate the constitutional ban on religious tests as a condition of holding office.
LBJ was sworn in on a Roman Catholic Missal, a religious text. There were some at the time who felt that this act was illegal and inexcusable, since a Bible was aavailable on the plane. I did not know about the others! How did the public view these swearing in acts?
A custom is not a law. There is no Constitutional requirement that a Congressman “must” do anything but only that they “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.”
There is no specified protocol for how to swear the oath and no religious text is required at all, much less any requirements about which hands to put where. You don’t even have to raise a hand. All you’re actually required to do is say the words.
I think that would probably be discriminatory against people without an/both arms. So no.
I believe that it is also improper to have anything resting on top of the Koran. So the best way might be to hold the Koran in the right hand, and raise the right hand with the Koran in it. (And, as others have said, this is all just custom, and not legally obligated at all.)
None whatsoever. You can raise anything you want or nothing at all.
Does anyone know what Max Cleland did? He doesn’t have a right arm.
:dubious:
What did Clinton raise?
That might be facilitated by being sworn in on the Miss January centerfold.
What problem would there be?
We do, however, frown on people who raise one hand, and then cross the fingers of the other hand behind their backs. 
You can bet one of these stupid religious zealots will try to make it law. They’re no better than the nutcases in the middle east.
If the gummint put that on pay-per-view, they might clear enough to put a sizable dent in the national debt. I know I’d cough up a pretty penny to see it.
I can’t find it in the Archives, but The Master did a column on alternative courtroom oaths. The relevant section:
I agree! The idea that a congressman would WORRY about taking an oath-it is hilarious! as Mark Twain once said (of the US Congress):’…“a remarkable institution…it begins with a prayer and ends with an indictment!” :smack:
Do we really need two (or more) pages to say “Dennis Praeger is a moron”?
If you’re swearing to uphold the Constitution, wouldn’t it be more meaningful to be holding a copy of the Constitution?
You actually aren’t required to swear an oath. You can simply publicly affirm that you will do the job to the best of your ability.
The Religious Right isn’t an easy group to pin down. After a certain point I have a hard time distinguishing the average conservative christians from the extreme ones. But I might be saying this because of ingroup/outgroup bias.
Anyway, I don’t think Dobson would quite go along with Prager here, but he’d be pretty close. I think he’s just a little to the left of that. He seems to be a good indicator of what most of the religious right thinks about a given topic.