Code Congressional and Administrative News publication, a commonly used source of legislative history. And in fact, two Supreme Court cases decided during the Reagan Administration did make reference to signing statements, although the general trend has continued to be that signing statements are rarely used by courts when interpreting federal statutes.
All Presidents since President Reagan have issued signing statements, and increasingly these statements have contained one or more challenges or objections to the laws being signed. President George W. Bush objected to over provisions of law, usually on the grounds that they infringe on the authority granted to the Executive Branch by the Constitution. Some of these objections may imply that the President does not intend to execute these provisions of law.
Commentators and journalists, including the American Bar Association, have taken issue with the increasing use of signing statements by Presidents to object to provisions of law, arguing that in effect such statements constitute a veto to which Congress cannot respond, and therefore represent a line item veto. Line item vetoes were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court Clinton v.
City of New York , U. The Law Library of Congress has compiled the following selective bibliography of resources relating to presidential signing statements. The bibliography includes Congressional Hearings, court cases where the signing statements were discussed, law journal articles, selective press releases, news articles and other secondary materials.
Search this Guide Search. Presidential Signing Statements Presidential signing statements are official pronouncements issued by the President of the United States at or near the time a bill is signed into law. Memorandum from William P. Legal Counsel, available online. Legal Counsel available online. Alito, Jr.
Department of Justice Memorandum Text of Joseph Biden's Signing Statements select year When a United States President signs legislation enacted by Congress, he may issue a written statement commenting on his actions.
Signing statements are often merely ceremonial, praising or criticizing the law or lawmakers or remarking on the importance of the issue addressed by the law. Such signing statements are often called "rhetorical" signing statements. However, other signing statements may challenge Congress's authority to act or assert that that the president will not enforce the law as written.
This type of signing statement is often called a "constitutional" signing statement: a president will object to a provision of law by citing a provision of the Constitution, or by citing a Supreme Court ruling interpreting the Constitution, or by bare assertion without citation to authority that the law offends the Constitution or invades the power of the Executive.
Or the president may announce that he will interpret the law to avoid constitutional difficulties that he perceives. Please note that other presidential documents appearing on the White House website -- especially presidential remarks delivered at bill signing ceremonies -- are frequently misidentified as signing statements; even scholars occasionally make this mistake.
This website presents a document as a signing statement only if the Daily or Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents , publications issued by the Office of the Federal Register in the Government Printing Office, categorizes the document as a signing statement. In April, , the Library of Congress posted a useful short guide to signing statements.
In a letter opinion issued 18 June , the Government Accountability Office GAO provided an excellent background summary of signing statements that begins with this sentence: "There is no established definition of 'signing statement.
Where can I find presidential signing statements? This Website. This website provides all signing statements issued since January of , and the signing statements are multiple-sourced. This website:. Multiple-sourcing is provided for two reasons. First, it helps readers verify the text of the signing statements. Second, during the Bush administration, the exact number of signing statements became rather controversial.
By providing all available official sources for the statements, this website helped settle the question. The last administration posted almost all of President Bush's signing statements on the White House website.
That website became defunct unavailable to the public on January 20, However, I copied the text of the signing statements from the Bush White House website between and , so the White House text is still available here, on this website. President Obama issued his first signing statement on February 17, President Obama's subsequent signing statements have appeared on the White House website, under "Official Statements" in the section entitled "Briefing Room. The Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents.
Each new issue of the Weekly Compilation was typically posted one to three weeks following the week to which it applied. Guide from the University of Chicago The University of Chicago Law Library has a very helpful guide to locating presidential documents , including signing statements.
Most of the resources listed there are more easily accessed by attorneys than by members of the public. Access to the source e. Where can I find signing statements issued before ? American Presidency Project : to present.
While the American Presidency Project provides text of the signing statements of all presidents since , it does not provide the text of the laws affected by the signing statements. Because the signing statements can be difficult to understand without the laws to which they refer, this website provides the full text of the laws affected by Barack Obama's and George W.
Bush's signing statements. If you want to read George W. Bush's and Barack Obama's signing statements and the laws to which they pertain, this website is a better choice. The online WCPD is searchable from through , but it is only browsable after To locate the signing statements in the online WCPD from to , open each weekly issue and scan the contents for "Bill Signings.
You would have to browse over WCPD files to find all of them. How many signing statements has President Biden issued? From his inauguration through October 8, , President Biden has issued two signing statements. Both are rhetorical and raise no constitutional objections or interpretations. For detailed information about how I arrived at this count, please consult this chart.
For information about counting methods for signing statements, please see the FAQ below "How many signing statements did George W. Bush issue? How many signing statements did Trump issue? From his inauguration through his departure from office, Trump issued 70 signing statements. Trump's signing statements affected specified provisions of law and made 70 mentions of unspecified provisions in 66 Congressional enactments, for a total of at least objections.
For detailed information about how I arrived at these numbers, please consult this chart. How many signing statements did President Obama issue? From his inauguration through December 16, , President Obama issued 37 signing statements affecting specified provisions and making eight mentions of unspecified provisions of law in 37 Congressional enactments.
Obama issued 13 rhetorical signing statements, 23 constitutional signing statements, and one statement remarking on an "inadvertent technical drafting error" in the affected bill. How many signing statements did George W. Summary Answer. George W. Bush issued signing statements affecting over 1, provisions of law in Congressional enactments.
Two types of "metrics" surfaced in writings about signing statements during the Bush administration. One approach is to count the signing statement documents that a president issues when signing Congressional enactments. The second approach is to count the provisions of law challenged by those documents.
Number of Signing Statement Documents. Bush issued signing statement documents during his term. For a list of the signing statements, click here. Here is my count by year of issuance:. Number of Laws Affected by Signing Statements. We now have two independent academic counts of the number of laws challenged in the Bush signing statements.
Based on those two counts, it seems most accurate to report that George W. Bush issued signing statements affecting over 1, provisions of federal law.
The full list of Bush's signing statements is here. But I heard that Bush issued or signing statements There are two approaches to counting signing statements. The first is to count the documents issued by the president that are categorized as signing statements.
The second is to count each provision of law affected by a single signing statement document as a separate statement. It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older.
This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results. Federal Legislative Research: Signing Statements. What are Presidential Signing Statements? For more insight into Presidential Signing Statements Much of the information on this website was gather from the following websites:.
Law Library of Congress. Lexis - Presidential Documents and Executive Orders. Also, has answers to frequently asking questions about signing statements. Public Papers of the Presidents J82 : 71st Congress to present. U45 : Signing statements published in Legislative History volumes 99th Congress to present, in print. It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older.
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