Presidential Signing Statements

The ABA's "Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements and the Separation of Powers Doctrine" released its report on Sunday evening. Marty Lederman has an interesting post on the report's conclusions. He also notes the "terrific archival work of Phillip Cooper, Christopher Kelley and Charlie Savage, demonstrating the Bush Administration's prodigious use of signing statements to announce the President's constitutional doubts about numerous statutory enactments, and the President's intentions to construe and implement numerous statutory provisions in a manner inconsistent with legislative intent."

Comments

[William Henderson]

Anne,

The NY Times also published a story today on the ABA Report that is worth reading: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/24/washington/24prexy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The ABA committee responsible for this report includes some very prominent names. Per the Times story: "former Representative Mickey Edwards, Republican of Oklahoma; Bruce E. Fein, a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration; Harold Hongju Koh, the dean of Yale Law School; William S. Sessions, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Kathleen M. Sullivan, a former dean of Stanford Law School; and Patricia M. Wald, former chief judge of a federal appeals court."