Lawfare Archive: What Happens When We Don’t Believe the President’s Oath?
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2024
⏱️ 65 minutes
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Summary
From March 4, 2017: Yesterday, Just Security and the Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law hosted Benjamin Wittes for a conversation on a question about the path of the Trump presidency so far: what happens when we can’t take the president’s oath of office seriously?
Ben’s talk focused on an essay he and Quinta Jurecic posted to Lawfare simultaneously with the speech, in which they argued that the presidential oath—little discussed though it may be in constitutional jurisprudence and academic literature—is actually the glue that holds together many of our assumptions about how government functions. And when large enough numbers of people come to doubt the sincerity of the president’s oath, those assumptions begin to crumble.
Big thanks to Ryan Goodman of Just Security and Zachary Goldman of the Center on Law and Security for putting together this event. Make sure to also read Ryan’s Just Security followup post on his discussion with Ben and the questions raised by our essay.
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| 1:01.0 | Search skills for life. I'm Anna Hickey, associate editor for Communications, with an episode from the Lawfare |
| 1:19.6 | Archive for January 15th, 2024. |
| 1:23.0 | Earlier this month, the United States Supreme Court agreed to review the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling |
| 1:30.0 | that former President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of the presidency |
| 1:34.4 | under the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment and therefore his name may not appear |
| 1:39.6 | on the state's 2024 presidential primary ballot. |
| 1:43.2 | For today's archive episode, I picked an episode from March 4, 2017, |
| 1:48.4 | featuring a talk with Benjamin Wittis, hosted by Just Security |
| 1:52.4 | and the Center on Law In Security at the New York University School of Law, |
| 1:56.0 | on what happens if citizens can't take the President's oath of office seriously, |
| 2:01.0 | the foundational role of the presidential oath, and Trump's apparent inability to honor |
| 2:06.1 | his oath. |
... |
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