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ESSENTIAL READING ABOUT SIGNING STATEMENTS
Web
Links
AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION
(ABA)
ABA
Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements and the Separation of Powers Doctrine
Report and Recommendations (July 24, 2006)
News Conference Upon Release of Task Force Report Recommendations (streaming video and podcast)
ABA
House of Delegates
Streaming audio and video:
Debate at ABA Annual Meeting concerning presidential signing statements (August 8, 2006)
News Release: ABA Adopts New Policy on Presidential Signing Statements (August 8, 2006)
Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities
Elisa Massimino and Avidan Cover, While Congress Slept (Winter, 2006)
Doug Cassel, Washington's "War Against Terrorism" and Human Rights: The View from Abroad (Winter, 2006)
ABA Journal
Debra Cassens Weiss, DOJ Official Who Signed 2005 Waterboarding Memo
Revisits the Issue (February 14, 2008)
Martha Neil , Specter Tries to Rein in Signing Statements (July 3,
2007)
Debra Cassens Weiss, Senator Vows Action on Signing Statements (June
20, 2007)
Debra Cassens Weiss, Bush Makes Good on Signing Vows (June 19, 2007)
Other
Statement of Karen J. Mathis, President of the American Bar Association,
Before the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives
Concerning Presidential Signing Statements (January 31, 2007)
CONGRESS
Hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee Concerning Presidential Signing Statements (June 27, 2006)
Committee Member Statement
Senator Patrick Leahy, Ranking Member, Judiciary Committee, (June 27, 2006)
Testimony and Statements Given to the Full Committee
Michelle E. Boardman,
Deputy Assistant Attorney General, United States Department of Justice (June 27, 2006)
Bruce Fein, Partner, Fein & Fein (June 27, 2006)
Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, Harvard Law School (June 27, 2006)
Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, Associate Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center (June 27, 2006)
Christopher S. Yoo, Professor, Vanderbilt University Law School (June 27, 2006)
Prepared Statement
Senator Edward M. Kennedy (June 27, 2006)
Hearing of the House Judiciary Committee Concerning Presidential Signing Statements (January 31, 2007)
Index to member and witness statements
Hearing
of the House Financial Services Committee: "Negative Implications of the
President’s Signing Statement on the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act" (February 8, 2008)
Witness statements, letters concerning the Bush administration's
decision not to testify, and archived web cast of the hearing
Hearing of
the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee
of the House Armed Services Committee on the impact of the Presidential
signing statement on the Department of Defense’s implementation of the
Fiscal Year 2008 National Defense Authorization Act (March 11, 2008)
Opening Statement of Subcommittee Chairman Vic Snyder
Audio File of Hearing (direct link to audio file)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Statement of T.J. Halstead, Legislative Attorney, American Law
Division, Congressional Research Service
Statement of Gary L. Kepplinger, General Counsel, U.S. Government
Accountability Office
Statement of Bruce Fein, Constitutional Attorney, Bruce Fein &
Associates, Member, ABA Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements
Statement of Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, Associate Professor of Law,
Georgetown University Law Center
Government Accountability Office (GAO)
GAO-08-553T: Statement of Gary L.
Kepplinger General Counsel, Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Oversight
and Investigations, Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives:
Presidential Signing Statements - Agency Implementation of Selected
Provisions of Law (March 11, 2008)
GAO Letter Opinion B-308603 ,
Presidential Signing Statements Accompanying the Fiscal Year 2006 Appropriations
Acts (June 18, 2007)
GAO Report to Congressional Requesters
B-309928 ,
Presidential Signing Statements--Agency Implementation of Ten Provisions of Law
(December 20, 2007)
(abstract
at GAO website)
Congressional Research Service (Library of Congress)
CRS
Report for Congress RL33667, Presidential Signing Statements:
Constitutional and Institutional Implications (updated September, 2007)
CRS
Report for Congress RL33667, Presidential Signing Statements:
Constitutional and Institutional Implications (updated April, 2007)
CRS
Report for Congress RL33667, Presidential Signing Statements:
Constitutional and Institutional Implications (September 20, 2006)
CRS
Report for Congress ON-97-589,
Statutory Interpretation: General Principles and Recent Trends (March 30,
2006) (some discussion of legal significance of presidential signing
statements)
Rep.
Jane Harman (D-Ca) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mi)
Harman And Conyers Demand Administration Rescind Patriot Act “Signing
Statement” (March 27, 2006)
Gary
Hart
Rushing Towards a Constitutional Crisis (May, 2006)
Patrick
Leahy, US Senator (D-Vt)
Leahy: President Strikes Again In PATRIOT Act Bill Signing Statement;
Suggests He'll Pick And Choose Which Parts Of Law To Follow (Press Relase, March, 2006)
Radio Interview with Rachel Maddow
concerning signing statements, including those for the Patriot Act
Reauthorization and the Detainee Treatment Act (March 28, 2006) (streaming
audio: 8:05 minutes, mp3 format)
Edward
Kennedy, US Senator (D-Mass)
The Problem with Presidential Signing Statements: Their Use and Misuse by
the Bush Administration (June 28, 2006)
Diane
Feinstein, US Senator (D-Ca)
Keynote speech before the Queen’s Bench Bar Association, discussing the
Bush Administration’s across-the-board efforts to expand executive power
(June 1, 2006) (PDF
version) (posting
at the Senator's website)
Republican Members of the House Committee on the
Judiciary
Press Release by Beth Frigola:
Smith: Presidential Signing Statements a ‘Non-Issue’ (January 31,
2007)
WHITE HOUSE
and
EXECUTIVE BRANCH
Vice President Richard B. Cheney
Vice President's Remarks to the Traveling Press, Air Force Two (en route to Muscat, Oman) (December 20, 2005)
(speaking about his view of the Constitutional powers of the Presidency)
Vice President's Remarks at the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize Luncheon Followed by Q&A (June 19, 2006)
(including remarks about the "unitary executive" and reference to House Minority Report on Iran-Contra)
Samuel Alito (as
former DOJ attorney)
Memorandum to the Department of Justice's Legal Strategy Working Group (Feb., 1986)
United States Department of Justice
A Slip of the Pen: NYT OpEd by Walter Dellinger, Chapel Hill, NC (July 31, 2006)
Presidential Authority to Decline to Execute Unconstitutional Statutes (November 2, 1994)
The Legal Significance of Presidential Signing Statements: Memorandum for Bernard M. Nussbaum, Counsel to the President (November 1993)
Legal Authorities Supporting the Activities of the National Security Agency Described by the President (January 2006)
Memorandum by John Yoo, Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, for
William J. Haynes IT, General Counsel of the Department of Defense: Re:
Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United
States (March 13, 2003) (memo rescinded nine months after issuance,
declassified March 31, 2008) (document source: website of Senator Patrick
Leahy (D-Vt))
Part one of memo
Part two of memo
ATTORNEYS
and
SCHOLARS
William S. Sessions (comment in the San Antonio Express News) (Member of the ABA Task Force on Signing Statements)
Comment: Congress fails to rein in Bush (July 9, 2006)
Mickey Edwards (comment in The Nation) (Member of the ABA Task Force on Signing Statements)
Lawyers Challenge Bush (July 13, 2006)
The Erosion of American Constitutional Principle
(July 18, 2006)
Bruce Fein (comment in the Washington Times)
(Member of the ABA Task Force on Signing Statements)
Great usurpations (August 1, 2006)
Phillip Cooper, Ph.D. (Portland State University)
George W. Bush, Edgar Allen Poe, and the Use and Abuse of Presidential Signing Statements (Sept., 2005)
Neil Kinkopf, Ph.D. (Associate Professor, Georgia State University College of Law)
Signing Statements and the President's Authority to Refuse to Enforce the Law (June 15, 2006)
Jack M. Balkin (Professor of Law, Yale University Law School)
President Bush: "It's Not Law Unless I Say So (And Even If I Said So)" (May, 2006)
Laurence Tribe (Professor of Law, Harvard Law School)
Larry Tribe on the ABA Signing Statements Report (August 6, 2006)
Curtis Bradley (Duke Law School) and Eric Posner (University of Chicago Law School)
Presidential Signing Statements and Executive Power (U. Chicago Working Paper) (July, 2006)
John Dean (at Findlaw.com)
The Problem with Presidential Signing Statements: Their Use and Misuse by the Bush Administration (Jan., 2006)
Vice President Cheney and The Fight Over "Inherent" Presidential Powers: His Attempt to Swing the Pendulum Back Began Long Before 9/11 (February 10, 2006)
Richard Epstein, University of Chicago Law School
The problem with presidential signing statements (July 16, 2006)
Executive Signing Statements (June 16, 2006)
Jennifer Van Bergen
The Unitary Executive: Is The Doctrine Behind the Bush Presidency Consistent with a Democratic State? (Jan., 2006)
Why the Bush Doctrine Violates the Constitution: The Unitary Executive (Jan., 2006)
Eric Alterman, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress
Think Again: Signing the Constitution Away (May 3, 2006)
Law Review Articles
Comment (Malinda Lee),
Reorienting
the Debate on Presidential Signing Statements: The Need for Transparency
in the President's Constitutional Objections, Reservations, and Assertions
of Power, 55 UCLA L. Rev. 705 (2008)
Tillman,
A Textualist Defense of Article I, Section 7, Clause 3: Why Hollingsworth v. Virginia Was Rightly Decided, and Why INS v. Chadha Was Wrongly Reasoned, 83 Tex. L. Rev. 1265 (April, 2005)
©
University of Texas Law Review, 2005 (reprinted here with permission of the author and the University of Texas Law Review)
Yoo, Calabresi, & Colangelo, The Unitary Executive in the Modern Era, 1945-2001,
91 Iowa L. Rev.
601 (2005)
Sunstein, Beyond Marbury: The Executive's Power To Say What the Law Is,115 Yale L.J. 2580 (2006)
Strauss, Within Marbury: The Importance of Judicial Limits on the Executive’s Power To Say What the Law Is, 116 Yale L.J. Pocket Part 59 (2006)
Christopher Kelley, Ph.D., Political Scientist, University of Miami
A Comparative Look at the Constitutional Signing Statement The Case of Bush and Clinton (April, 2003)
The Unitary Executive and The Presidential Signing Statement (Doctoral Dissertation, 2003)
Rethinking Presidential Power -- The Unitary Executive and the George W. Bush Presidency (April, 2005)
Dawn E. Johnsen,
Professor, Indiana University School of Law – Bloomington
Faithfully Executing the Laws: Internal Legal Constraints on Executive
Power
Karl Manheim and Allan Ides
The
Unitary Executive,
Loyola-LA Legal Studies Paper No.
2006-39 (September,
2006)
Robert
V. Percival,
Professor of Law, University of Maryland School of
Law
Presidential Management of the Administrative State: The Not-So-Unitary
Executive,
51 Duke L. J. 963 (December 2001)
NEWS
ORGANIZATIONS
Boston Globe (Charlie Savage, winner of the Pultizer Prize for
his coverage of signing statements)
News Articles
Bush cites authority to bypass FEMA law: Signing statement is employed
again (October 5, 2006)
Scalia's dissent gives 'signing statements' more heft (July 15, 2006)
Hearing set on signing statements: Senate panel will probe rationale for
Bush actions (June 22, 2006)
Bar group will review Bush's legal challenges (June, 2006)
Cheney aide is screening legislation: Adviser seeks to protect Bush power
(May, 2006)
Hearing vowed on Bush's powers: Senator [Arlen Specter] questions
bypassing of laws (May, 2006)
Examples of the president's signing statements (April, 2006)
Bush challenges hundreds of laws: President cites powers of his office
(April, 2006)
Interviews
Radio interview with Rachel Maddow
concerning some origins of the current expression of the unitary executive
theory (July 4, 2006) (streaming audio, 7:44 minutes, mp3 format)
Radio
Interview with Rachel Maddow, signing statements and the GAO report of
6/18/2007 (June 19, 2007) (streaming audio, 12:15 minutes, mp3 format)
Radio
Interview with Rachel Maddow, signing statements generally, and the
signing statement for the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal
Year 2008 (January 31, 2008) (streaming audio, 14:20 minutes, mp3 format)
Chicago Tribune
Senate panel accuses Bush of diluting laws (June 26, 2006)
Dallas Morning News
Bush not shy in asserting right to defy law (May, 2006)
Der Spiegel (Germany)
Eavesdropping on America (May, 2006)
Forbes (AP's Laurie Kellerman)
Bush Ignores Laws He Inks, Vexing Congress (June 27, 2006)
Fox News
Report by Megyn
Kendall (June, 2006) (streaming
video concerning Senate hearing concerning signing statements, available
through Technorati, 1:05 minutes)
Jurist (University of Pennsylvania Law School)
Specter presses Bush administration on domestic spying, signing statements
(June 16, 2006)
Knight-Ridder
Bush using a little-noticed strategy to alter the balance of power (Jan.,
2006)
Monsters and Critics – UK
American Bar Association to look at Bush exceptions to law (June 4, 2006)
Public Radio (audio reports)
Daniel Schorr, Presidential Signing Statements and the Constitution,
All Things Considered (February 15, 2008)
Terry Gross, Interview with Charlie Savage, In Pursuit of the Imperial
President, Fresh Air from WHYY (September 5, 2007)
Interview with Dahlia Lithwick, GAO Finds Signing Statements Influenced
Law, Day to Day (June 20, 2007)
Diane Rehm, "Presidential Powers at a Time of War"
(February 1, 2007)
(some discussion of signing statements)
Brian Naylor, House Studies Impact of Bush 'Signing Statements,'
Morning Edition (February 1, 2007)
Presidential Signing Statements and Separation of Powers, Dr. Christopher
Kelley and Bruce Fein (WMUB's "Forum," August 25, 2006)
You can also listen the Forum program from this web site.
Click here. These files are presented here with the generous and
express permission of WMUB and the Executive Producer of Forum. Many
thanks to WMUB, a public affairs production of NPR@88.5 FM.
Daniel Schorr, Why the Bar Would Rather Bush Use Vetoes, All Things
Considered (July 26, 2006)
Limits of Executive Power, Law Professors Lawrence Tribe and Douglas Kmiec
("On Point," August 22, 2006)
Bush and the Presidential Signing Statement: Political Scientist Andy
Rudalevige explores Presidential Signing Statements (NPR: Jan.8, 2006)
Expanding Executive Power Via Signing Statements (NPR: January, 2006)
Specter Challenges Presidential Signing Statements (NPR: June 28, 2006)
The Audacity
of Government (This American Life, Episode 353, March 28, 2008)
Public Television
Frontline: Signing Statements
Frontline:
Cheney's Law (full program can be
viewed online)
Frontline: Cheney In His Own Words: An overview of the vice president's views on
presidential power and covert action that shows a remarkable consistency
from the 1980s to today
Bill Moyers Journal: Presidential Signing Statements (July 2007)
New York Times
Michael Abramowitz,
On Signing Statements, McCain Says 'Never,' Obama and Clinton 'Sometimes'
(February 25, 2008)
Cheney Defends Eavesdropping Without Warrants (December 21, 2005)
New Yorker
The Hidden Power: The legal mind behind the White House’s war on terror
(July 3, 2006)
Cheney's Cheney (June 26, 2006)
Open Source, Chris Lydon (audio report)
Presidential Signing Statements (May, 2006)
Rachel Maddow (MSNBC and Air America Radio)
Radio program (Air America Radio) devoted to
separation of powers, the "unitary executive" and its authors and origins
beginning with Dick Cheney and the Iran-Contra affair, including
interviews with John Nichols (the Nation magazine) and Charlie Savage
(Boston Globe) (July 4, 2006) (streaming audio, 49:39 minutes, mp3 format)
Reuters
Specter proposes challenge of Bush's power on laws (July 27, 2006)
San Francisco Chronicle
Feinstein accuses Bush of abusing presidential power 'Signing statements'
usurp authority of Congress, she says (May, 2006)
Time Magazine
Andrew Sullivan (Opinion Piece): "We Don't Need A New King George" (January
19, 2006)
U.S. News and World Report
Cheney's Guy: Barely known outside Washington's corridors of power, David
Addington is the most powerful man you've never heard of (May, 2006)
Wall Street Journal
Court Pick Endorsed Theory of Far-Reaching Authority; Tenet of Bush White
House (Jan., 2006)
Washington Post
A Governing Philosophy Rebuffed: Ruling Emphasizes Constitutional
Boundaries (Jan. 29, 2006)
Specter to grill officials on Bush ignoring laws (June 21, 2006)
Alito Once Made Case For Presidential Power (Jan., 2006)
Andrew Cohen:
The Biggest Story You've Probably Missed (June 27, 2006)
George Will ,
No Checks Many Imbalances (February 16, 2006)
BLOGS
and
POINT-OF-VIEW SOURCES
Dahlia
Lithwick, slate.com
Absolute Power: The Real Reason the Bush Administration Won't Back Down on
Guantanamo (January 13, 2007).
Sign Here: Presidential signing statements are more than just executive
branch lunacy (Jan., 2006)
Daily
Kos
On Torture, ScAlito and Presidential Signing Statements (Jan., 2006)
My
Direct Democracy, David Singer
Cheney's Office Behind Unprecedented Signing Statements (May, 2006)
The Federalist Society
Steven
Calabresi, The Legal Significance of Presidential Signing Statements
(August 9, 2006)
John Birch Society
(John Manus, President)
Jacob
Weisberg, slate.com
The Power-Madness of King George: Is Bush turning America into an elective
dictatorship? (Jan., 2006)
Caroline Frederickson, Legislative Director of the ACLU
Air America Radio Interview with Rachel
Maddow, signing statement for the Postal Accountability Act, warrantless
search and surveillance, unitary executive (January 8, 2008) (streaming
audio, 10:13 minutes, mp3 format)
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© Joyce A. Green, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
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