We don't necessarily have to go into my credentials, but you're welcome to search back through my posts to find out whether I am qualified to render opinions on questions pertaining to the constitution. To make it short for you, I am, but that's not the point. If you had only read the articles I posted, we wouldn't even be down this path:
Quote:
The Constitutional and Practical Problems With Bush's Use of Signing Statements
Given the incredible number of constitutional challenges Bush is issuing to new laws, without vetoing them, his use of signing statements is going to sooner or later put him in an untenable position. And there is a strong argument that it has already put him in a position contrary to Supreme Court precedent, and the Constitution, vis-à-vis the veto power.
Bush is using signing statements like line item vetoes. Yet the Supreme Court has held the line item vetoes are unconstitutional. In 1988, in Clinton v. New York, the High Court said a president had to veto an entire law: Even Congress, with its Line Item Veto Act, could not permit him to veto provisions he might not like.
The Court held the Line Item Veto Act unconstitutional in that it violated the Constitution's Presentment Clause. That Clause says that after a bill has passed both Houses, but "before it become[s] a Law," it must be presented to the President, who "shall sign it" if he approves it, but "return it" - that is, veto the bill, in its entirety-- if he does not.
Following the Court's logic, and the spirit of the Presentment Clause, a president who finds part of a bill unconstitutional, ought to veto the entire bill -- not sign it with reservations in a way that attempts to effectively veto part (and only part) of the bill. Yet that is exactly what Bush is doing. The Presentment Clause makes clear that the veto power is to be used with respect to a bill in its entirety, not in part.
The frequency and the audacity of Bush's use of signing statements are troubling. Enactments by Congress are presumed to be constitutional - as the Justice Department has often reiterated. For example, take what is close to boilerplate language from a government brief (selected at random): "It is well-established that Congressional legislation is entitled to a strong presumption of constitutionality. See United States v. Morrison ('Every possible presumption is in favor of the validity of a statute, and this continues until the contrary is shown beyond a rational doubt.')."
Bush's use of signing statements thus potentially brings him into conflict with his own Justice Department. The Justice Department is responsible for defending the constitutionality of laws enacted by Congress. What is going to happen when the question at issue is the constitutionality of a provision the President has declared unconstitutional in a signing statement?
Does the President's signing statement overcome the presumption of constitutionality? I doubt it. Will the Department of Justice have a serious conflict of interest? For certain, it will.
Should thus Congress establish its own non-partisan legal division, not unlike the Congressional Reference Service, to protect its interests, since the Department of Justice may have conflicts? It's something to think about.
These are just a few practical and constitutional problems that arise when a president acts as if there is his government, and then there is the Congress' government. Signing statements often ignore the fact the only Congress can create all the departments and agencies of the Executive Branch, and only Congress can fund these operations.
And the power to create and fund is also, by implication, the power to regulate and to oversee. Congress can, to some extent, direct how these agencies will function without infringing on presidential power.
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How do you take a sentence granting authority for the presidency to enforce laws and interpret that to mean that the passage also gives him authority to create policy/law (legislative branch) and/or interpret whether a law or its implementation is constitutional (judicial branch since Marbury)?
It's reasoning like the above that compels me to continually urge you to attend a constitutional law class or a legal reasoning course. IF you ever make it to West Coast, please PM me because I will personally see to it that you can sit in one of my classes or a colleague's.