Since Bush vetoed the recent war-funding bill specifying a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, the House is working on a new bill; but Bush is threatening to veto that, too. Even before he’s seen it.
Meanwhile, in the event Bush should sign a funding bill but attach a “signing statement” on how and to what extent he intends to follow it, Pelosi is threatening a lawsuit. Which could lead to a definitive SCOTUS ruling on just what, if anything, these “signing statements” lawfully mean. Provided she can get a court to hear it at all – this has been tried before without success:
There is also the possibility, of course, that the SCOTUS, given its current composition, just might rule in the president’s favor.
Either way, the decision would remain binding in future constitutional showdowns between president and Congress regardless of which party controls which.
Can Pelosi sue? Definitely. The suit may be dismissed, though.
Should she? I’m not sure. Signing statements in and of themselves do not hold any real value, the President is not part of the legislative branch and he can only veto, sign, or refuse to act on legislation passed by Congress (if he refuses to act it eventually becomes law without his signature.) While I think the line item veto is actually a good idea, it was ruled to be unconstitutional during Clinton’s administration, and the line item veto only allowed itemized veto of parts of the law (and was limited to appropriations bills IIRC), it never allowed the President to add anything to the law.
I’m not entirely sure how this would play out legally. The reason Nixon could not be compelled in court to stop bombing Cambodia is the court nor congress has any sort of authority to demand such a thing. The only way they can stop the President from doing something is to impeach him or to refuse to fund it any further, and until funding runs out or the President is removed from office that is how it is. The legislature doesn’t have the power to give orders to the President. They can defund wars, they can’t actually say “you have to order the military to stop fighting, now.” That’s outside the powers of the Congress as laid out in the Constitution. That’s why I’m not really sure if Pelosi should sue. At best she could get signing statements to be officially declared as meaningless, but they aren’t actually meaningful now, any way. She has all she needs to stop the war if she really wants to, all she has to do is defund the war, the President can’t create money out of thin air and if he tried to unconstitutionally secure funding for the war by infringing on the Congress’s right to appropriate funds there’d be a groundswell of support for his impeachment. A court decision can’t end the war, Congress can, however, and without even worrying about signing statements.
As it is, I don’t think the Democrats or Pelosi have the intestinal fortitude to actually outright defund the war, so they’ll have to compromise in some way.
Will she? I doubt it, I expect a compromise will be reached.
But, that’s just it, you see. What you say is almost certainly constitutionally valid, but it is not the Administration’s position. W writes the “signing statements” on the theory that they actually mean something. We have yet to hear him say anything that could be construed as an acknowledgment that “This president is not above the law.”
I don’t see it as necessary. And while it’s never a bad thing to clear up the law, the actual desire of Pelosi, at least as she presents it, is to end the war. Having signing statements clearly defined as unconstitutional won’t end the war.
The courts have repeatedly ruled, in the many instances where they have dismissed lawsuits designed to stop wars, that the war powers of the United States are shared in joint by the Congress and the President. That any instance where there is not a Constitutional impasse, the court will dismiss the case as not being ripe.
An impasse would be Bush signing into law legislation that continues to fund the Iraq war, but requires structured troop withdrawals wherein Bush accepts the funding and ignores the requirement to withdraw troops. The SCOTUS would have to hear a case in such a situation to decide if the President was acting unconstitutionally or if the law itself was invalid and that Congress doesn’t have the authority to make such conditional legislation.
I can see signing statements coming to the forefront in such a situation, but ultimately I don’t view them as constitutionally or legally significant, in such a case the court would be ruling on Congress’s appropriations bill and the President’s actions, not his signing statement.
Also, while courts have, in the past, issued injunctions against Presidential acts I’m not familiar with an injunction ever being issued to actually stop the President from taking a military actions or to cease a war. I do not think the courts would be willing to issue such an injunction because I think the majority of the justices would not view it as being under their authority to issue such an injunction.
It’s my belief that the court’s view it as Congress’s responsibility to start and end wars, Congress is responsible for giving legal authorization for war (which the courts have ruled does not have to be a formal DOW), for funding wars, and for ratifying peace treaties. Those responsibilities make it clear it is the job of the President to prosecute wars and the job of the Congress to end/stop/defund them if they so choose. Sans a situation where Congress is deciding to ratify a peace treaty or not, Congress primary mechanism for ending a war is to defund it, one which works perfectly well. If the Democrats really want to end the war that is what they have to do, there isn’t an “easy way out” that’s the only power they have to end the war and if they really want to they have to use that power.
Of course they wouldn’t. Good thing that the OP was talking about the SCOTUS ruling on signing statements and not the power of the SCOTUS to force the end of a war.
If you’d read my two posts in this very thread you’d notice I was certainly not oblivious to this fact, my commentary on BG’s initial post was “sure she could sue, but since her stated goals is to end the war I fail to see the relevance of the signing statement issue.”
Well, I was specifically addressing whether Pelosi should sue over signing statements- not whether she’s doing it for ulterior motives (such as ending the war). If she does sue, and the courts rule in Bush’s favor… well, at least we’ll know what the legal status of signing statements is. In my opinion, Bush has been using them far too broadly, and has been basically daring his opponents to take him to court over 'em.
I’m starting to wonder under what circumstances the “signing statements” question could properly be brought before a federal court. Any case short of impeachment? (Wherein W might invoke the theory against a charge he acted unlawfully by disobeying the language of legislation he signed – but, impeachment proceedings are in Congress, not the courts.)
Probably some format which includes “Pelosi v. Bush” the total list of plaintiffs would include multiple congressman who supported the idea. Look at the case of Doe v. President Bush in which a constitutional lawyer sued the President on behalf of several members of the military in conjunction with some legislators, the plaintiff listed was like a dozen names.
If they were to rule in his favor, I wonder if we’d get to have Dubya screeching “Unlimited Power!!!” while blasting Barack Obama with lightning bolts.
If Congress, or individual Congresscritters, filed suit about Bush’s signing statements, the courts would likely tell them to get lost. The judiciary generally stays out of contests between the other two branches regarding their powers under Article I and Article II.
IANAL, but here’s how I understand it: if a Presidential signing statement appeared to conflict with the meaning of the statute as passed by Congress and signed by the President, and a private individual was negatively affected by the Executive Branch’s reliance on the interpretation in the signing statement, that individual could sue in Federal court to resolve the matter.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with Presidential signing statements. It isn’t always perfectly clear what a statute means that’s just been signed into law, and Executive agencies will have to promulgate regulations to enforce the statute, based on some interpretation of its meaning. If the signing statement is simply the President’s weighing in on how he interprets the gray areas of the statute, he’s performing a legitimate Executive function, and his signing statement will presumably influence what sort of regulations are drafted, in a perfectly legitimate way.
It’s only when there appears to be a conflict between the statute and the signing statement that there’s an issue for the courts. Or for articles of impeachment, which are really Congress’ only response to such infringements.
So, if Congress passes a law saying “We will fund the military for 6 months, provided benchmark X is passed.” And Bush signs, with a statement that “I believe that benchmarks are not a proper restraint on the executive powers, and will ignore it as necessary to perform my executive duties.”, in a similar manner to his signing statement on the torture law, when and how can someone sue?
Can someone sue him when he takes the money, having signed his disagreement with it?
Is it necessary to wait until the benchmark is not met, and he does not begin to remove troops?
Erm, perhaps this is being taken for granted, but I think a major point that has not been mention is that signing statements, in and of themselves, are, IMHO, legally meaningless if the President actually follows the law.
For example, if Congress passed a law saying, all US troops out in 90 days, and the President signed it with a statement declaring, “I’m not bound by this law!!!1!” but he then goes ahead and withdraws the troops, I don’t see that there’s any basis for a lawsuit.
If the President fails to carry out the law, signing statement or no, then there’s a plenty good case for a lawsuit (which could very well go nowhere in our courts) or, even better, impeachment.
In other words, I don’t think the President simply asserting a power that I believe is unconstitutional is a strong basis for a lawsuit. He should do something wrong first.
I agree completely with you here. There has to be some form of noncompliance with the law resulting from the signing statement for it to be legally actionable. After all, Saying Bad Stuff isn’t a crime in and of itself, thanks to the First Amendment.
Pelosi v. Bush, United States v. Bush, the House of Representatives v. Bush?