Presidential Signing Statements Their Use and Misuse by the Bush Administration

Here is an excerpt from a longer post: Long Sunday: Presidential Signing Statements Their Use and Misuse by the Bush Administration. This passage is from Edward Lazarus, writing on Findlaw;

Last month, to much public fanfare, the President brought John McCain into the White House to announce before the assembled cameras that he was going to drop his opposition to McCain's proposed legislation banning cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees by all U.S. personnel, anywhere in the world. But under the Administration's approach to executive power, this concession -- as well as Bush's subsequent signing of the ban on torture -- was all an elaborate charade.

After all, under the Administration's theory, Congress has absolutely no power to limit the president's inherent authority as commander in chief to fight the war on terror. Which means that Bush signed the McCain bill while reserving to himself the right to violate its anti-torture provisions with impunity - and, of course, to do so in secret, so that the American people will never know (barring another leak to the New York Times) that he has flouted this very popular law.

In fact, when signing the Defense appropriation bill containing the McCain Amendment, Bush issued a signing statement euphemistically reserving just this authority to ignore the very law to which he had just put his name. Thus, the President wrote: "The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of 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, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks."

That signed statement shows, in microcosm, how the President sees the separation of powers: The President, in his view of the world, can interpret away constraints on his power, such as those in the McCain Amendment, or FISA before it. And the courts can hardly question his dubious "interpretations" even if they gut the very statutes they construe: After all, there are "constitutional limitations on the judicial power" - though not, apparently, on the power of the executive.

Comments

[mynewsbot]

Nice blog

[Virgil Johnson]

Just as a point of interest for everyone. This little tactic of definition attached by the president at the end of bill's was the brainchild of Alito, in previous service to another right wing administration under the direction of Edwin Meese (the Big Bigot, as he was called by none other than Baker!). So, why would the president not want to see this man rise to the Supreme Court - having given such tools to would-be dictators? I just thought you might like to know the origin of this practice.

[Jodi]

Virgil--thanks; I didn't know this and I agree that it's significant.

[Bill Wilson]

President Bush, who has separated the presidency even from the executive branch, made a point of justifying himself by visiting the Emancipation Proclamation, "in its original form," thereby getting close to Abraham Lincoln's fiat, his proclamation that emerged from the President without the advice and consent of courts or Congress. Neither Bush nor the press seems to have explained that he was citing Abraham Lincoln as the model he follows when he answers to a higher justice than mere law, thereby validating the Republican Party as the party of Lincoln:

"It seems fitting on Martin Luther King Day that I come and look at the Emancipation Proclamation in its original form. Abraham Lincoln recognized that all men are created equal. Martin Luther King lived on that admonition to call our country to a higher calling, and today we celebrate the life of an American who called Americans to account when we didn't live up to our ideals."

[joe]

where is the crown when the pres signs a signing bill?