Which president started signing statements

Signing statements have been in existence since the early 19th century, and have indicated conflicts between the Executive and Legislative branches, however, they originally were rare occurrences.

Since the Reagan Administration, the occurrences have become more frequent. Many administrations encouraged courts to use signing statements when interpreting the meaning of statutes, but courts have generally avoided using statements to interpret federal statutes.

Some signing statements have become controversial because presidents have used the signing statement as an opportunity to state that they will not enforce portions of a law that they consider unconstitutional. The Constitution mandates the Executive Branch, which is headed by the president, "to takes care that the laws be faithfully executed.

This language is also known as the "Take Care Clause," and requires the President to enforce the laws passed by Congress. Traditionally, if a president does not agree with a law, either because he feels it is unconstitutional or ill-advised, he can veto it. It has also been argued that the President has taken an oath to "preserve, protect, and defend" the Constitution, and thus is required to veto a law that is unconstitutional.

Article II, Section 1. Concurrent with the rise in the number of statements issued, the use of signing statements to voice constitutional objections to acts of Congress has become increasingly prevalent over the past 60 years. This type of executive action began in earnest during the Reagan Administration, as one aspect of a comprehensive strategy employed by the Reagan Administration to assert aggressively the constitutional prerogatives of the presidency.

President Reagan expanded the use and impact of the presidential signing statement, transforming it into a mechanism for the assertion of presidential authority and intent.

This goal was illustrated in a memorandum drafted by Samuel A. Alito, Jr. Code Congressional and Administrative News publication. This strategy met with a degree of success in two major Supreme Court cases that were decided during this time period. In INS v. Chadha , which struck down as unconstitutional the congressional practice of subjecting various executive branch actions to a legislative veto, the Court noted that "11 Presidents, from Mr. Wilson through Mr. Reagan, who have been presented with this issue have gone on record at some point to challenge congressional vetoes as unconstitutional.

Synar , which struck down provisions of the Gramm-Rudman Deficit Reduction Act on the basis that they impermissibly imbued a legislative branch officer with executive authority, the Court noted: "[i]n his signing statement, the President expressed his view that the act was constitutionally defective because of the Comptroller General's ability to exercise supervisory authority over the President.

Indeed, as discussed in further detail below, the contents of signing statements do not seem to have factored prominently in judicial decisions. One of the most significant conflicts involving a presidential signing statement in the Reagan Administration arose from the President's statement accompanying the signing of the Deficit Reduction Act of In that statement, the President took issue with provisions of the bill constituting the Competition in Contracting Act, announcing his "vigorous objection to certain provisions that would unconstitutionally attempt to delegate to the Comptroller General A judicial ruling issued in March of upheld the conferral of power at issue.

The Administration of President George H. In this memo, Barr identified 10 categories of legislative action he considered constitutionally problematic and noted that the Administration had objected to many of these perceived intrusions through the issuance of signing statements. One category that was consistently acted upon by the Bush I Administration was protection of presidential authority under the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. For example, upon signing the National and Community Services Act of into law, President Bush issued a statement declaring that provisions in the bill establishing a Board of Directors charged with administering a National and Community Services Act Commission were unconstitutional due to the requirement that certain appointees were to be drawn from a pool of nominees forwarded by the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the majority leader of the Senate.

President Bush specifically noted that such a requirement exceeded the authority of Congress in the appointment context and declared that he would treat the requirement as being "without legal force or effect. Additionally, upon signing the Dayton Heritage Preservation Act of into law, President Bush issued a statement objecting to language in the bill that directed the Secretary of Interior to make appointments of individuals to the Dayton Aviation Heritage Commission based on the recommendations of local officials, stating that since "[t]he majority of members are effectively selected by various nonfederal officials and thus are not appointed in conformity with the Appointments Clause of the Constitution," he was signing the bill "on the understanding that the commission will serve only in an advisory capacity and will not exercise Government power.

However, as in the Reagan Administration, it is not apparent that these efforts were successful. While the policy aims of his Administration might have differed, President Clinton's conception of executive power revealed itself to be largely consonant with the philosophical underpinnings of the Reagan and Bush I Administrations.

President Clinton also relied upon the OLC to produce memoranda not only in support of the issuance of signing statements generally, but also asserting presidential authority to refuse to enforce unconstitutional statutes. Regarding the former, then Assistant Attorney General Walter Dellinger prepared an OLC memorandum asserting that the issuance of signing statements to "make substantive legal, constitutional or administrative pronouncements," was well established, and that these uses "generally serve legitimate and defensible purposes.

Dellinger "believe[d] to be uncontroversial," the memorandum pointed to what he argued was "significant judicial approval," and "consistent and substantial executive practice. It is important to note that while the Dellinger memorandum asserted that the President has an "enhanced responsibility to resist unconstitutional provisions that encroach upon the constitutional power of the Presidency," the memo nonetheless acknowledged that the "Supreme Court plays a special role in resolving disputes about the constitutionality of enactments.

As a general matter, if the President believes that the Court would sustain a particular provision as constitutional, the President should execute the statute, notwithstanding his own beliefs about the constitutional issue. If, however, the President, exercising his independent judgment, determines both that a provision would violate the Constitution and that it is probable that the Court would agree with him, the President has the authority to decline to execute the statute.

The memorandum went on to advise that in deciding whether to refuse to enforce a provision of law, the President should weigh "the effect of compliance with the provision on the constitutional rights of affected individuals and on the executive branch's constitutional authority," with a focus on the likelihood of whether that compliance or non-compliance would permit judicial resolution of the issue.

In light of this conception of presidential power, it is not surprising that the Clinton signing statements often contained broad constitutional pronouncements similar to those of the Reagan and Bush I Administrations, ranging from the foreign affairs power to the Recommendation Clause.

Regarding the latter, in a signing statement accompanying the Balanced Budget Act of , President Clinton took objection to a provision requiring the Secretary of Health and Human Services to develop certain legislative proposals, declaring that he would "construe this provision in light of my constitutional duty and authority to recommend to the Congress such legislative measures as I judge necessary and expedient, and to supervise and guide my subordinates, including the review of their proposed communications to Congress.

For example, in a statement issued along with the enactment of the Coast Guard Authorization Act of , President Clinton likewise objected to a provision of the bill that purported to require the designation of certain commission members exercising executive power from persons recommended by local officials or organizations. President Clinton declared that "[t]he Appointments Clause does not permit such restrictions to be imposed upon the executive branch's powers of appointment. Therefore I will not interpret [this provision] of the act as binding, and I direct the Secretary of Transportation to regard the designations and recommendations arising from it as advisory only.

While signing statements that raise constitutional objections or signal an intention to refuse to enforce a provision in law are usually generalized in nature, President Clinton's statement accompanying the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year provides a stark example of a substantive presidential directive being included within a statement itself. The act established the National Nuclear Security Administration NNSA , a new, semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy to manage and oversee the operational and security activities of the department's nuclear weapons laboratories.

In his signing statement, the President expressed misgivings with respect to structural arrangements within the new agency and the limitations on the Secretary of Energy's ability to direct and control the activities and personnel of the NNSA, but did not suggest that the legislation raised constitutional issues.

In particular, the President objected to what he saw as the isolation of the personnel and contractors of the NNSA from direction by department officials outside the new agency; the limitation on the Secretary's ability to employ his statutory authorities to direct the activities and personnel of the NNSA both personally and through designated subordinates; the uncertainty whether the department's duty to comply with the procedural and substantive requirements of environmental laws would be fulfilled under the new arrangement; the removal of the Secretary's direct authority over certain sensitive classified programs; and the potentially deleterious effect of the creation of redundant support functions in the areas of procurement, personnel, public affairs, legal affairs, and counterintelligence.

To ensure that these perceived deficiencies do not, in his view, undermine the Secretary's statutory responsibilities in the area, the President directed the Secretary to assume the duties and functions of the new office of Under Secretary for Nuclear Security and to "guide and direct" all NNSA personnel by using his authority, "to the extent permitted by law," to assign any departmental officer or employee to a concurrent office within NNSA.

The Secretary is also directed to "mitigate" the risks to the chain of command between him and subordinate agency personnel presented by the legislation's redundant functions "to the extent permissible under law. Whereas the statement issued by President Reagan in response to the Competition in Contracting Act was typical of presidential signing statements in that it contained a generalized constitutional objection to a provision in a bill, followed by subsequent particularized and substantive presidential action, President Clinton's NNSA statement was uncharacteristically direct, laying out the specific actions that were to be taken in order to ensure the vitiation of the provisions President Clinton deemed objectionable.

As noted by Professor Philip J. Cooper, this statement did not simply raise a generalized constitutional objection or signal an intent to refuse to enforce the provisions at issue, but, rather, constituted an "order to do that which the Congress had expressly rejected. Like its predecessors, the Administration of George W.

Bush Bush II employed the signing statement to voice constitutional objections to, or concerns with, congressional enactments, or to enunciate the Administration's interpretation of an enactment it deemed ambiguous. However, while the nature and scope of the objections raised by the Bush II Administration mirrored those of prior Administrations, the sheer number of challenges contained in the signing statements indicated the Administration was using the presidential instrument relative to all levels and elements of the executive branch and to assert aggressively presidential prerogatives in its relations with the Congress and the judiciary.

These factors, in turn, generated a significant degree of controversy regarding the issuance of presidential signing statements. At first glance, it does not appear that President Bush departed significantly from prior practice in the signing statement context, having issued signing statements as compared to during the Clinton Administration.

However, the qualitative difference in the Bush II approach becomes apparent when considering the number of individual challenges or objections to statutory provisions that were contained in his statements. Contributing to the controversy was the high profile of several of the provisions to which President Bush objected.

For instance, in the signing statement accompanying the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of , President Bush declared that provisions requiring the executive branch to submit reports and audits to Congress would be construed "in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information the disclosure of which could impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative processes of the Executive, or the performance of the Executive's constitutional duties.

While the number of provisions challenged or objected to by President Bush gave rise to controversy, it is important to note that the substance of his signing statements did not appear to differ substantively from those issued by either Presidents Reagan or Clinton. As with those Administrations, the majority of the Bush II signing statements made generalized objections to perceived encroachments on executive authority.

Professor Philip J. Cooper characterized the constitutional objections raised by President Bush as falling across 17 categories, ranging from generalized assertions of presidential authority to supervise the "unitary executive branch" 45 to federalism limits imposed by the Supreme Court in United States v. While the substance of the Bush II signing statements appears to be comparable to that of previous administrations, the nature and sheer number of provisions challenged or objected to indicates that there is nonetheless a qualitative difference to the Bush II Administration's use of this instrument.

As has been widely noted, President Bush "emphatically endorsed the unitariness of the executive branch," 48 and took steps to assert sole presidential authority over his Administration. In addition to actions taken to prosecute the War on Terror, President Bush exercised significant control over the agency rulemaking process, 49 and issued executive orders claiming authority to control the release of presidential records and to classify and reclassify information that implicated national security concerns.

When viewed through the prism of the Administration's actions in these contexts, it seems evident that the Bush II signing statements were an integral part of the Administration's efforts to further its broad view of presidential prerogatives and to assert functional and determinative control over all elements of the executive decision-making process. Furthermore, the dramatic increase in the number of provisions challenged and objected to by President Bush has been widely seen as being aimed at altering the conception of presidential authority not only in the internal operations of the executive branch, but with respect to Congress, the courts, and the public.

As touched upon above, the large bulk of the signing statements the Bush II Administration issued did not apply particularized constitutional rationales to specific scenarios, nor do they contain explicit, measurable refusals to enforce a law. Instead, the statements made broad and largely hortatory assertions of executive authority that made it effectively impossible to ascertain what factors, if any, might lead to substantive constitutional or interpretive conflict in the implementation of an act.

The often vague nature of these constitutional challenges, coupled with the pervasive manner in which they were raised in numerous signing statements could thus be interpreted as an attempt by the Administration to object systematically to any perceived congressional encroachment, however slight, with the aim of inuring the other branches of government and the public to the validity of such objections and the attendant conception of presidential authority that will presumably follow from sustained exposure and acquiescence to such claims of power.

Like its predecessors, the Administration of President Barack Obama has continued to employ presidential signing statements to voice constitutional objections to congressional enactments, or to enunciate the Administration's interpretation of an enactment it has deemed ambiguous.

However, the Obama Administration has used the signing statement as a vehicle for asserting constitutional objections to duly enacted statutes with significantly less frequency than prior administrations.

Upon entering office, President Obama issued a memorandum to the heads of the executive departments outlining the new Administration's policy on the use of signing statements. The President proceeded to establish the foundational principles of his Administration's approach to signing statements.

The Administration would attempt to communicate constitutional objections to Congress in the early stages of the legislative process so as to avoid the necessity of a signing statement; only base objections on "well-founded" interpretations of the Constitution; identify any constitutional objection "with sufficient specificity" to ensure that the legal nature and basis of the objection is clear; and announce an intent to construe a provision so as to avoid a constitutional problem "only if that construction is a legitimate one.

While the frequency with which the Obama Administration has asserted constitutional objections to enacted statutory provisions represents a departure from previous administrations, the types of objections within the signing statements that the President has issued have generally mirrored those of previous administrations.

The Obama Administration has continued to register familiar constitutional objections to perceived infringements on the President's authority in foreign affairs and as Commander in Chief, as well as violations of the Appointments Clause. In addition to objections associated with the President's authority in foreign affairs, some of the Administration's most common objections have pertained to the President's relationship with Congress and the separation of powers—generally focusing on Congress's authority to obtain information from the executive branch.

For example, upon signing the Omnibus Appropriations Act of , the President issued a signing statement referencing a provision that prohibited the use of appropriated funds to pay the salary of any federal employee who interferes with communications between Members of Congress and other federal employees.

President Obama has also consistently used signing statements to object to congressionally imposed limitations on the President's discretion concerning the disposition of individuals held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. In alone, the President objected to statutory provisions restricting the transfer of Guantanamo detainees, either into the United States or to a foreign country, on four separate occasions. One substantive area in which the Obama Administration's use of the signing statement has departed from certain previous administrations, especially the Bush II Administration, has been the absence of any references to the "unitary executive.

Bush "emphatically endorsed the unitariness of the executive branch" and arguably used the signing statement to assert sole presidential authority over his Administration. For example, in perhaps his most controversial signing statement to date, President Obama expressly objected to a provision of the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act of that he perceived as infringing on his authority to "supervise and oversee the executive branch. The statement asserted that "[t]he President has well-established authority to supervise and oversee the executive branch, and to obtain advice in furtherance of this supervisory authority.

The continued use of signing statements has generated a significant degree of controversy, leading some to call for the enactment of a bar to their issuance, or for the conferral upon Congress of the right to challenge statements in court.

As has been illustrated, there is a long history of presidential issuance of signing statements. These statements provide "one way in which a President may indicate his intent to refuse to enforce a provision of a congressionally enacted law that he believes to be unconstitutional.

As one commentator has suggested: "Where the President has played a major role in drafting or supporting a particular statutory provision, presidential statements should be granted interpretive significance When the President opposed the provision being interpreted, however, his signing statements This observation is buttressed by the analysis of the district court in Dacosta v. Nixon , which stated that a bill, when passed by Congress and approved by the President, "establishe[s] 'the policy of the United States' to the exclusion of any different executive or administrative policy, and ha[s] binding force and effect on every officer of the Government, no matter what their private judgments of that policy, and illegalize[s] the pursuit of an inconsistent executive or administration policy.

No executive statement denying efficacy to legislation could have either validity or effect. This persistent practice on the part of presidents gives rise to the question of whether a President can refuse to comply with a law he believes to be unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court has not directly addressed this issue, but a long line of precedent could be taken to indicate a consistent view on the part of the Court that the Take Care Clause 84 imposes a duty on the President to ensure that officials obey Congress's instructions, and, conversely, that the Clause does not imbue the President with the authority to dispense with congressional enactments.

In Kendall v. United States ex rel Stokes , for instance, the Court declared that where Congress has imposed upon an executive officer a valid duty, "the duty and responsibility grow out of and are subject to the control of the law, and not to the direction of the President.

To contend that the obligation imposed on the President to see the laws faithfully executed implies a power to forbid their execution, is a novel construction of the Constitution, and entirely inadmissible.

In Myers v. United States , for instance, the Court declared that "[t]he duty of the President to see that the laws be executed is a duty that does not go beyond the laws or require him to achieve more than Congress sees fit to leave within his power. Sawyer , the Court declared that "the President's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker. The Constitution limits his functions in the lawmaking process to the recommending of laws he thinks wise and the vetoing of laws he thinks bad.

Despite these declarations from the Court, the executive branch has consistently maintained that the President possesses authority to decline to enforce enactments he views as unconstitutional. United States , for support for this proposition, asserting that since "the Court sustained the President's view that the statute at issue was unconstitutional without any member of the Court suggesting that the President had acted improperly in refusing to abide by the statute," the Court could therefore "be seen to have implicitly vindicated the view that the President may refuse to comply with a statute that limits his constitutional powers if he believes it to be unconstitutional.

Commissioner , for the proposition that "the President has the 'power to veto encroaching laws It is not at all clear that the reliance of the DOJ on these factors would bear the weight of direct judicial scrutiny. Specifically, as noted above, the Court in Myers v. United States evidenced a clear appreciation of the limits of the President's authority under the Take Care Clause. For instance, Professor Kelley found challenges to about 50 laws in a single signing statement for the Consolidated Appropriations Act of In September of , Neil Kinkopf, Associate Professor of Law at Georgia State University College of Law and former Special Assistant in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, issued a list of "every provision of a law objected to by the White House in a signing statement [between and ], the reason for the objection, and a link to the relevant signing statement.

Professor Kinkopf's ambitious project demonstrated that President Bush's signing statements had, by that time, challenged more than 1, provisions of federal law. Some commentators failed to update their numbers after the early Boston Globe article, and some still do not distinguish between the signing statement documents and the number of laws challenged.

Therefore, reports of signing statements remained fairly common throughout the rest of Bush's term. Recent reports that George W. Bush issued 1, signing statements are based on a count provided by Professor Christopher Kelly to the New York Times.

I am reporting that President Bush issued signing statements challenging over 1, provisions in enactments based on both Professor Kinkopf's and Professor Kelley's counts. Why was the number of Bush's signing statements controversial? Before George W. Bush's administration, signing statements had received little attention outside academia. Thus, it took scholars, lawyers, members of Congress, and reporters some time to establish methods and conventions for counting and categorizing signing statements.

Eventually, many people concluded that the controversy was as much about how President Bush used signing statements as about how many he issued. When George W. Bush's signing statements began receiving media attention in , there was a great deal of controversy about how many signing statements he had issued. Bush's use of signing statements.

Office of Legal Counsel Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michelle Boardman, who identified herself as the Department of Justice's expert on signing statements, represented the Bush administration at the hearing.

Boardman's remarks to the Committee were somewhat unclear and a bit clouded by attempts to categorize the statements. However, she seems to have indicated that there were signing statements or, by an alternate reading of her words, perhaps as many as , even though this website had already posted official, multiple-sourced text for See, e.

In January of , the Department of Justice again asserted that President Bush had signed only "constitutional" signing statements. See , Statement of John P. The confusion cleared in the fall of when the Congressional Research Service reported that George W. Bush had issued signing statements. My counts squares with the CRS. Bush issued nine signing statements after the CRS count of September, Three signing statements , , were expressly identified as signing statements by the WCPD but never appeared on the White House website.

Two bills received two signing statements each: for H. One signing statement covers two bills: H. Did George W. Bush issue more signing statements than all previous presidents combined? It is often claimed that George W. Bush issued more signing statements than all previous presidents combined. If one merely counts the "signing statement" documents , the Bush administration was not very different from previous recent administrations.

If you count the number of provisions of law challenged by the Bush signing statements over 1, provisions , the statement is fair. However, the question is somewhat misleading. The better approach is to compare how various presidents have used signing statements.

To date, the CRS has offered the most useful comparison of recent administrations, by focusing on constitutional challenges raised in signing statements.

This is both a substantive and quantitative analysis. In a "constitutional" signing statement, a president will object to a provision of law by directly 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.

A president may announce his intent to disregard the law due to claimed constitutional infirmity, or he may announce that he will interpret the law to avoid the constitutional difficulties that he perceives. By contrast, a "rhetorical" signing statement is ceremonial in nature, and usually praises the wisdom of the law or the lawmakers, or notes the importance of the issue addressed by the law. Or a rhetorical statement may criticize Congress or the enactment without challenging Congress's authority to act.

For an example of a "rhetorical" signing statement, see President's Statement on S. For an example of a constitutional signing statement, see President's Statement on Energy Policy Act of Bush's use of signing statements to the three previous administrations, reporting that:. Bush's signing statements raised constitutional objections.

Two other reports focus on how presidents have used signing statements, as opposed to how many they've issued. Who drafted signing statements for President Bush? David Addington. Arlen Specter R-Pa questioning the candidate concerning the origin and preparation of signing statements, pp. The Obama administration may continue this practice.

In a recent recruitment posting on the OMB website, the job duties listed for the position of OMB legislative analyst include preparing "memoranda including signing statements and veto messages to [sic] the President on enrolled bills.

While a bill is pending in Congress, the Executive branch may send Congress a SAP explaining the administration's position on the bill. SAPs may praise a bill, express support, discourage passage, state Executive objections to specific provisions, or contain veto threats.

Until the th Congress was seated, there was a strong correlation between language found in the Bush administration's signing statements and the objections and veto threats found in SAPs.

Many signing statements repeated, verbatim or nearly verbatim, the language found in SAPs. Clearly, many SAPs served as templates for subsequent signing statements. For all laws that were subjected to signing statements, I have provided the Bush administration's SAPs. Why was Bush's use of signing statement controversial? Many scholars, lawyers, reporters, commentators, and members of Congress regarded George W.

Bush's use of signing statements as a constitutional crisis. Prominent individuals -- across the entire political spectrum -- expressed concern that the Bush administration's use of signing statements was an attempt to shift the balance of power among the three branches of the federal government, or to lay groundwork for Supreme Court precedent that could rewrite the law controlling the respective powers of the three branches.

Non-partisan sources concluded that the Bush administration tried to alter our concept of the powers of Congress and the presidency and to institutionalize a view of expansive executive authority. The following explains the issues. I have also provided a list of links for those who want more in-depth reading. Our government has three branches.

The legislative branch Congress enacts law. The executive branch the president carries out or "executes" the laws. The judicial branch the courts applies the law to individual cases and controversies and ensures, by nullifying laws and government actions that offend the Constitution and laws, that government officials do not exceed their powers.

All three branches must, in practical and logistical terms, interpret the Constitution, case law, and statutes to perform their duties faithfully.

However, when such issues come before the courts, final interpretation belongs to the judicial branch. There is no constitutional authorization for the President to amend or repeal.

DaCosta v. Nixon , 55 F. United States v. The Court, agreed with President Roosevelt and struck down the statutory provision, citing his signing statement in its opinion. C F57 Constitutional Commentary Call Number: K3. Curtis A. Bradley and Eric A. Paul T. Christopher S. Particularly the issue Symposium: The Last Word? Cass and Peter L. Presidential Signing Statements Hoover - Obama External This site, from the American Presidency Project, provides full text of the signing statements and is searchable by year.

Presidential Signing Statements Research Guide External This guide, created by the Georgetown Law Library, is a starting point for researching presidential signing statements and their significance in the U. She has been licensed to practice law since and maintains active licenses to practice law in the Commonwealth of Virginia and the State of Oklahoma. Back to top.