The Unknown Candidate: ABA: Bush Signing Statements Undermine Constitution

Monday, July 24, 2006

ABA: Bush Signing Statements Undermine Constitution

U.S. Newswire Reported on Monday, July 17th:

President Bush has made aggressive use of presidential signing statements to interpret acts of Congress, prompting serious questions. What are the implications for the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers? Do presidential signing statements conflict with congressional intent? Has the role of presidential signing statements changed in recent years? An American Bar Association Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements and the Separation of Powers Doctrine, formed by ABA President Michael S. Greco, has been studying these issues....

The task force released its findings and recommendations in a press conference earlier this week. During that press conference, the task force, in response to a journalist question, urged reporters to re-read the Constitution in order to better understand how the President is using signing statements to ignore the law, upset the balance of powers, and undermine the Constitution.

I would suggest it is not they who need to re-read the Constitution. It is the White House.

Elizabeth Weiss Green reports:

George W. Bush did not invent the document known as the presidential signing statement; he inherited it. Franklin Roosevelt, Bill Clinton, and even James Monroe, in 1830, authored the statements, which spell out the president's sometimes controversial interpretation of the very law he's signing. But no president has used signing statements quite like Bush.

Although the president has not issued more statements in total than any other president, he has challenged more than 750 laws in more than 100 signing statements. And he has used them to, in effect, challenge parts of laws, and challenge them more aggressively, than any president before him. Bush's liberal use of those statements first attracted attention in December 2005, when he signed a torture ban—but then added a statement reserving the right not to enforce the ban, alongside his signature. Since then, Congress has held a hearing to investigate Bush's use of the statements, a bipartisan advocacy group has condemned their use, and Democratic Rep. Barney Frank has introduced a bill that would allow Congress to override content in them that contradicts signed legislation.

Now, U.S. News has learned, an American Bar Association task force is set to suggest even stronger action. In a report to be released Monday, the task force will recommend that Congress pass legislation providing for some sort of judicial review of the signing statements. Some task force members want to simply give Congress the right to sue over the signing statements; other task force members will not characterize what sort of judicial review might ultimately emerge.