ABA Task Force Recommendation on Presidential Signing Statements

Just finished reading the ABA Task Force Recommendation on Presidential Signing Statements and the Separation of Powers Doctrine. The Report analyzes and makes recommendations with respect to the President's use of signing statements to disregard the rule of law.

The Report confirms, as any marginally sentient being has known for at least five years, that the Bush Administration represents the greatest threat to America as we know it in at least the last 50 years. Arguably, Bush represents an even greater existential threat to the country than the Nazis in WW II.

The Report concludes that Presidential signing statements may be used solely for the purpose of illuminating the President's understanding of the meaning of a statute. He may not use it to justify disregarding the law.

The report tries to be non-partisan and level-headed, but the contempt of the authors for the Bush administration is palpable. For starters, the report makes no bones about the fact that through the signing statements, Bush is literally assuming kingly powers. The report also makes thinly veiled threats of removal from office, comparing Bush's actions unfavorably to those of King James II "which ultimately occasioned his dethronement" and suggested that legislation by Congress allowing judicial review of signing statements would "demonstrate an eagerness to play by constitutional rules short of impeachment."

The task force pointedly quotes at length from Jimmy Carter's 1978 signing statement for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (you know, the law that Bush keeps ignoring) as an example of a proper signing statement.

The historical discussion of signing statements is interesting also in that it highlights the non-constitutional problem with the signing statements, a problem that permeates the entire Bush administration, which is that the real reason for the signing statements is not that Bush feels the power of the President needs to be expanded, but that by creating such statements as an alternative to vetos Bush avoids political accountability. Few people know about the signing statements, and most Americans would be unable to understand their import even if they knew about them. By signing a bill and then secretly refusing to enforce it he can have it both ways - take credit for the bill in public while eviscerating its effectivenss.

But perhaps the saddest sentence in the report is the coda to the task force's suggestion that the Supreme Court should be given the opportunity to rule on the constitutionality of the signing statements: "It is to be hoped that the President would obey any constitutional declaration of the Supreme Court." What does it say about the state of the country that we need to worry about whether a President will obey an order of the Supreme Court?