Signing statement (United States)
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

A signing statement is a written pronouncement issued by the President of the United States upon the signing of a
bill Bill(s) may refer to: Common meanings * Banknote, paper cash (especially in the United States) * Bill (law), a proposed law put before a legislature * Invoice, commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer * Bill, a bird or animal's beak Plac ...
into law. They are usually printed along with the bill in '' United States Code Congressional and Administrative News'' (USCCAN). The statements begin with wording such as "This bill, which I have signed today" and continue with a brief description of the bill and often several paragraphs of political commentary. During the administration of President
George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
, there was a controversy over the President's use of signing statements, which critics charged was unusually extensive and modified the meaning of statutes. The practice predates the Bush administration, however, and was also used by the succeeding
Obama administration Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. A Democrat from Illinois, Obama took office following a decisive victory over Republican ...
. In July 2006, a task force of the American Bar Association stated that the use of signing statements to modify the meaning of duly enacted laws serves to "undermine the
rule of law The rule of law is the political philosophy that all citizens and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers and leaders. The rule of law is defined in the ''Encyclopedia Britannica ...
and our constitutional system of separation of powers".


Types

A study released by then-Assistant Attorney General
Walter Dellinger Walter Estes Dellinger III (May 15, 1941 – February 16, 2022) was an American attorney and legal scholar who served as the Douglas B. Maggs Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law. He also led the appellate practice at O'Melveny & My ...
(1993–1996) grouped signing statements into three categories: * Constitutional: asserts that the law is constitutionally defective in order to guide executive agencies in limiting its implementation; * Political: defines vague terms in the law to guide executive agencies in its implementation as written; * Rhetorical: uses the signing of the bill to mobilize political constituencies. In recent usage, the phrase "signing statement" has referred mostly to statements relating to constitutional matters that direct executive agencies to apply the law according to the president's interpretation of the Constitution. The "non-signing statement" is a related method that some presidents have used to express concerns about certain provisions in a bill without vetoing it. With the non-signing statement, presidents announce their reasons for declining to sign, while allowing the bill to become law unsigned. The U.S. Constitution allows such enactments by default: if the President does not sign the bill, it becomes law after ten days, excepting Sundays, " unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return..."


Applying a metric to signing statements

There is a controversy about how to count an executive's use of signing statements. A "flat count" of total signing statements would include the rhetorical and political statements as well as the constitutional. This may give a misleading number when the intent is to count the number of constitutional challenges issued. Another common metric is to count the "number of
statute A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs the legal entities of a city, state, or country by way of consent. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. Statutes are rules made by le ...
s" that are disputed by signing statements. This addresses a count of the constitutional issues but may be inherently inaccurate, due not only to ambiguity in the signing statements themselves but also to the method of determining which statutes are challenged. A Congressional Research Service report issued on September 17, 2007,Presidential Signing Statements: Constitutional and Institutional Implications
Congressional Research Service, September 17, 2007
uses as a metric the percentage of signing statements that contain "objections" to provisions of the bill being signed into law: In March 2009, '' The New York Times'' cited a different metric, the number of sections within bills that were challenged in signing statements:


Legal significance

No provision of the U.S. Constitution, federal statute, or common-law principle explicitly permits or prohibits signing statements. However, there is also no part of the Constitution that grants legal value to signing statements.
Article I Article One may refer to: Legal codes * Article One of the United States Constitution, pertaining to the powers of the United States Congress * Article One of the Constitution of India, pertaining to the federal nature of the republic Other us ...
, Section 7 (in the Presentment Clause) empowers the president to veto a law in its entirety, to sign it, or to do nothing. Article II, Section 3 requires that the executive "take care that the laws be faithfully executed". The Constitution does not authorize the President to cherry-pick which parts of validly enacted Congressional Laws he is going to obey and execute, and which he is not. Signing statements do not appear to have legal force by themselves, although they are all published in the ''
Federal Register The ''Federal Register'' (FR or sometimes Fed. Reg.) is the official journal of the federal government of the United States that contains government agency rules, proposed rules, and public notices. It is published every weekday, except on feder ...
''. As a practical matter, they may give notice of the way that the Executive intends to implement a law, which may make them more significant than the text of the law itself. There is a controversy about whether they should be considered as part of legislative history; proponents argue that they reflect the executive's position in negotiating with Congress; opponents assert that the executive's view of a law is not constitutionally part of the legislative history because only the Congress may make law. Presidential signing statements maintain particular potency with federal executive agencies, since these agencies are often responsible for the administration and enforcement of federal laws. A 2007 article in the '' Administrative Law Review'' noted how some federal agencies' usage of signing statements may not withstand legal challenges under common law standards of judicial deference to agency action.


Supreme Court rulings

The
Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
has not squarely addressed the limits of signing statements. ''
Marbury v. Madison ''Marbury v. Madison'', 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803), was a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Supreme Court case that established the principle of Judicial review in the Uni ...
'' (1803) and its progeny are generally considered to have established judicial review as a power of the Court, rather than of the Executive. ''
Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. ''Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.'', 467 U.S. 837 (1984), was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States, United States Supreme Court set forth the legal test for determining whether to grant Jud ...
'', 467 U.S. 837 (1984), established court deference to executive interpretations of a law
if Congress has not directly spoken to the precise question at issue
and if the interpretation is reasonable. This applies only to executive agencies; the President himself is not entitled to Chevron deference. To the extent that a signing statement would nullify part or all of a law, the Court may have addressed the matter in ''
Clinton v. City of New York ''Clinton v. City of New York'', 524 U.S. 417 (1998), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held, 6–3, that the line-item veto, as granted in the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, violated the Presentme ...
'' (1998), which invalidated the line-item veto because it violated bicameralism and presentment. In '' Hamdan v. Rumsfeld'' (2006), the Supreme Court gave no weight to a signing statement in interpreting the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, according to that case's dissent (which included Justice
Samuel Alito Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. ( ; born April 1, 1950) is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George W. Bush on October 31, 2005, and has served ...
, a proponent of expanded signing statements when he worked in the Reagan Justice Department – see "Presidential usage" below).


Presidential usage

The first president to issue a signing statement was James Monroe. Until the 1980s, with some exceptions, signing statements were generally triumphal, rhetorical, or political proclamations and went mostly unannounced. Until
Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
became President, only 75 statements had been issued; Reagan and his successors
George H. W. Bush George Herbert Walker BushSince around 2000, he has been usually called George H. W. Bush, Bush Senior, Bush 41 or Bush the Elder to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, who served as the 43rd president from 2001 to 2009; pr ...
and Bill Clinton produced 247 signing statements between the three of them.Lithwick, Dahlia (Jan. 30, 2006)
"Sign Here"
''
Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
''.
By the end of 2004,
George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
had issued 108 signing statements containing 505 constitutional challenges. As of January 30, 2008, he had signed 157 signing statements challenging over 1,100 provisions of federal law. The upswing in the use of signing statements during the Reagan administration coincides with the writing by
Samuel Alito Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. ( ; born April 1, 1950) is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George W. Bush on October 31, 2005, and has served ...
– then a staff attorney in the
Justice Department A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...
's
Office of Legal Counsel The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) is an office in the United States Department of Justice that assists the Attorney General's position as legal adviser to the President and all executive branch agencies. It drafts legal opinions of the Attorney ...
– of a 1986 memorandum making the case for "interpretive signing statements" as a tool to "increase the power of the Executive to shape the law". Alito proposed adding signing statements to a "reasonable number of bills" as a pilot project, but warned that "Congress is likely to resent the fact that the President will get in the last word on questions of interpretation." A November 3, 1993, memo from White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum explained the use of signing statements to object to potentially unconstitutional legislation: This same Department of Justice memorandum observed that use of presidential signing statements to create legislative history for the use of the courts was uncommon before the Reagan and Bush presidencies. In 1986, Attorney General
Edwin Meese Edwin Meese III (born December 2, 1931) is an American attorney, law professor, author and member of the Republican Party who served in official capacities within the Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial administration (1967–1974), the Reagan pres ...
entered into an arrangement with the West Publishing Company to have Presidential signing statements published for the first time in the ''U.S. Code Congressional and Administrative News,'' the standard collection of legislative history


Blue ribbon panel on signing statements

On July 24, 2006, the American Bar Association's Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements and the Separation of Powers Doctrine, appointed by ABA President
Michael S. Greco Michael Spencer Greco (born November 22, 1942 in Rende, Italy) is an American lawyer who served as president of the American Bar Association (2005–2006). He is a retired partner in the Boston office of K&L Gates, and a former partner at the now- ...
, issued a widely publicized report condemning some uses of signing statements. The task force report and recommendations were unanimously approved by ABA delegates at their August 2006 meeting. The bipartisan and independent blue-ribbon panel was chaired by Miami lawyer
Neal Sonnett Neal Sonnett is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney. Sonnett was the 1989 winner of the Robert C. Heeney Memorial Award"NACDL Awards." http://www.nacdl.org/public.nsf/freeform/awards?OpenDocument retrieved July 8, 2011 and in 2008 the American Bar ...
, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney and Chief of the Criminal Division for the Southern District of Florida. He is past chair of the ABA Criminal Justice Section, chair of the ABA Task Force on Domestic Surveillance and the ABA Task Force on Treatment of Enemy Combatants; and president-elect of the American Judicature Society. The report stated in part:


Congressional efforts to restrict signing statements

Sen. Arlen Specter (then a Republican of Pennsylvania) introduced the Presidential Signing Statements Act of 2006 on July 26, 2006. The bill would: # Instruct all state and federal courts to ignore presidential signing statements. ("No State or Federal court shall rely on or defer to a presidential signing statement as a source of authority.") # Instruct the Supreme Court to allow the U.S. Senate or
U.S. House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...
to file suit in order to determine the constitutionality of signing statements. The bill was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Specter chaired at the time, on the day it was introduced. As with all unpassed bills, it expired with the end of the
109th United States Congress The 109th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives, from January 3, 2005 to January 3, 2007, dur ...
on December 9, 2006. Specter reintroduced the legislation with the Presidential Signing Statements Act of 2007, but it died in the same committee.


Signing statements by administrations


Bush administration

George W. Bush's use of signing statements was and is controversial, both for the number of times employed (over 700 opinions, although Bill Clinton issued more) and for the apparent attempt to nullify legal restrictions on his actions through claims made in the statements – for example, his signing statement attached to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008. Some opponents have said that he in effect used signing statements as a line-item veto; the
Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
had previously ruled such vetoes as unconstitutional in the 1998 case, ''
Clinton v. City of New York ''Clinton v. City of New York'', 524 U.S. 417 (1998), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held, 6–3, that the line-item veto, as granted in the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, violated the Presentme ...
''. Previous administrations had made use of signing statements to dispute the validity of a new law or its individual components. George H. W. Bush challenged 232 statutes through signing statements during four years in office and Clinton challenged 140 over eight years. George W. Bush's 130 signing statements contain at least 1,100 challenges. The signing statement associated with the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, prohibiting cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody attracted controversy:
The executive branch shall construe... the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power....
The use of signing statements that fall into the constitutional category can create conundrums for executive branch employees. Political scientist James Pfiffner has written:
The president is the head of the executive branch, and in general, executive branch officials are bound to follow his direction. In cases in which a subordinate is ordered to do something illegal, the person can legitimately refuse the order. But if the public administrator is ordered to refuse to execute the law ... because the president has determined that the law infringes on his own interpretation of his constitutional authority, the public administrator faces an ethical dilemma.


Obama administration

On March 9, 2009, President Barack Obama ordered his executive officials to consult
Attorney General In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general. In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...
Eric Holder before relying on one of
George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
's signing statements to bypass a statute. He stated that he only planned to use signing statements when given legislation by Congress which contain unconstitutional provisions. In a memo to the heads of each department in the
executive branch The Executive, also referred as the Executive branch or Executive power, is the term commonly used to describe that part of government which enforces the law, and has overall responsibility for the governance of a State (polity), state. In poli ...
, Obama wrote:
In exercising my responsibility to determine whether a provision of an enrolled bill is unconstitutional, I will act with caution and restraint, based only on interpretations of the Constitution that are well-founded.
During his presidential campaign, Obama rejected the use of signing statements. He was asked at one rally: "when congress offers you a bill, do you promise not to use presidential signing statements to get your way?" Obama gave a one-word reply: "Yes." He added that "we aren't going to use signing statements as a way to do an end run around Congress." On March 11, 2009, Obama issued his first signing statement, attached to the omnibus spending bill for the second half of the 2009 fiscal year. This statement indicated that while the administration could ignore several provisions of the bill, they would advise congressional committees, and take congressional committees' guidelines as advisory, as he considered that "provisions of the legislation purport to condition the authority of officers to spend or reallocate funds on the approval of congressional committees" and the result would be "impermissible forms of legislative aggrandizement in the execution of the laws other than by enactment of statutes", including sections dealing with negotiations with foreign governments, restrictions on US involvement in UN peacekeeping missions, protections for government whistleblowers, and certain congressional claims of authority over spending. Obama issued a total of 37 signing statements during the course of his presidency.


See also

* *
List of United States federal executive orders Executive orders issued by presidents of the United States to help officers and agencies of the executive branch manage operations within the community. At the federal level of government in the United States, laws are made almost exclusively by ...
* Presidential proclamation *
Reservation (law) A reservation in international law is a caveat to a state's acceptance of a treaty. A reservation is defined by the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) as: a unilateral statement, however phrased or named, made by a State, when ...
*
Unitary executive theory The unitary executive theory is a theory of United States Constitution, United States constitutional law which holds that the President of the United States possesses the power to control the entire federal executive branch. The doctrine is root ...


References


Further reading

* * * *


External links


Presidential Signing Statements: Constitutional and Institutional Implications
Congressional Research Service, September 17, 2007
Presidential Signing Statements
Browsable database of signing statements from 1929 through the present. Added on June 30, 2006.

Example of a signing statement issued by President Bill Clinton on November 4, 1999.
By Order of the President: The Use and Abuse of Executive Direct Action
By Phillip J. Cooper. University Press of Kansas: 2002.

By Christopher Lee. Washington Post. January 2, 2006. (Discussing encouragement of the use of signing statements by
Samuel Alito Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. ( ; born April 1, 1950) is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George W. Bush on October 31, 2005, and has served ...
when he worked in the administration of former President
Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
)
For President, Final Say on a Bill Sometimes Comes After the Signing
By Elisabeth Bumiller. The New York Times. January 16, 2006.
Bush Shuns Patriot Act Requirement
By
Charlie Savage Charles or Charlie Savage may refer to: Real people * Charles Savage (banker) (fl. 1740s), governor of the Bank of England, 1745–1747 * Charles Savage (beachcomber) (died 1813), sailor and beachcomber known for his exploits on the islands of Fi ...
. The Boston Globe. March 24, 2006. (Disclosing Bush's claim, in a signing statement, that he has the authority to defy provisions in the new version of the USA Patriot Act requiring him to tell Congress how he is using its expanded police powers.)
The Problem With Presidential Signing Statements
by
Richard A. Epstein Richard Allen Epstein (born April 17, 1943) is an American legal scholar known for his writings on torts, contracts, property rights, law and economics, classical liberalism, and libertarianism. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at ...
, Cato Institute, July 18, 2006.
Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws
By
Charlie Savage Charles or Charlie Savage may refer to: Real people * Charles Savage (banker) (fl. 1740s), governor of the Bank of England, 1745–1747 * Charles Savage (beachcomber) (died 1813), sailor and beachcomber known for his exploits on the islands of Fi ...
. The Boston Globe. April 30, 2006. (A detailed look at five years of specific signing statement claims.)
"Bush cites authority to bypass FEMA law"
by
Charlie Savage Charles or Charlie Savage may refer to: Real people * Charles Savage (banker) (fl. 1740s), governor of the Bank of England, 1745–1747 * Charles Savage (beachcomber) (died 1813), sailor and beachcomber known for his exploits on the islands of Fi ...
. ''The Boston Globe'', October 6, 2006
Reinterpreting Torture: Presidential Signing Statements and the Circumvention of U.S. and International Law
by Erin Louise Palmer. Human Rights Brief (Fall 2006). {{DEFAULTSORT:Signing Statement United States constitutional case law George W. Bush administration controversies Presidency of the United States Government statements Article One of the United States Constitution