Constitutional Law

Signing Statements: A Legacy Continues?

'President Obama has criticized his predecessor's use of signing statements vowing to ignore parts of laws, but now he has issued one of his own,' reports the ABA Journal.

Without the usual pomp of a public signing ceremony, President Obama followed yesterday's signing of the earmark-laden Omnibus spending bill with a one-line e-mail to reporters. A pdf attachment to the e-mail explained his detailed objections to five provisions of the bill, which he indicated he would effectively ignore. Among the sections Obama objected to were a limitation on his authority to send troops on United Nations peacekeeping missions, a provision protecting whistle-blowers employed by the federal government and constraints on reallocating money between various government programs.

The prerogatives raised by Obama in yesterday's signing statement were not particularly controversial, according to David M. Golove, a constitutional law scholar at New York University. Obama's timing is noteworthy, however, for following shortly behind a recent promise that he would only use signing statements sparingly.

Though used since the 19^th century, signing statements did not become controversial until President George W. Bush began employing them to challenge more legislative provisions than all prior presidents combined. While many of Bush's signing statements resembled the one issued by Obama, others were more divisive, such as Bush's declaration that a legislation banning torture violated his authority as commander in chief. The Bush administration often defended its signing statements as legal and appropriate, despite critiques like that from the American Bar Association that the practice is 'contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers.'

Full post as published by ACS Blog on March 12, 2009 (boomark / email).