The President’s Recent Signing Statements
John Elwood • January 4, 2011 5:58 pm
I wasn’t planning on blogging the story in the print edition of today’s New York Times (p. A15), reporting that the President may issue a constitutional signing statement “asserting that [the President] has the constitutional power to disregard . . . restrictions” contained in recently enacted legislation that would restrict his ability to transfer detainees from Guantanamo. There has been a fair amount of leaking during this Administration undertaken in an apparent effort to influence decisionmaking, and I assumed that this leak (originally reported by ProPublica) was made to embarrass the White House into foregoing the issuance of such a signing statement. I figured that there was time enough to cover this story if the President actually issued such a signing statement.
But the following statement in the story caught my eye:
Early in his presidency, [President Obama] issued several signing statements that made relatively uncontroversial challenges. But he has not issued any since June 2009, when lawmakers of both parties expressed outrage over a statement he attached to a bill saying that he could disregard requirements imposed on certain negotiations with international financial institutions.
The online edition of the story included a hyperlink to a January 2010 article reporting that the Administration had adopted a new policy and that henceforth, the President would not issue signing statements “repeating claims of executive power that the White House has previously voiced.” I discussed that story here.
For the record, the President has issued constitutional signing statements since June 2009. ...
Haven't Seen Bully Pulpit, But About Signing Statements...
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Originally Posted by jimnyc
