We all know the basic process of how a law is created in this country - Congress passes a law, it goes to the president and he signs it.
However, what if, for whatever reason, he cannot sign it (but is otherwise capable of discharging the duties of his office). For example, suppose (God forbid) Barack Obama’s hands suddenly became paralyzed, so that he is unable to sign legislation.
Of course, in most cases, he could wait 10 days and then it would become law automatically. However, consider a situation like last night, where the legislation had to be signed right away and could not wait 10 days to become law.
Does the president have to physically sign a copy of the legislation? Can he appoint someone to sign it for him? Can he merely give the American version of Royal Assent?
The White House has a fancy auto-pen machine just for that purpose. I mean, not for anticipating that the president would be suddenly paralyzed, but for signing the 80 billion pieces of paper that he has to sign every day. Generally presidents only hand-sign stuff that is very prominent.
In 2005, The Department of Justice even weighed in (PDF) on whether use of the autopen is acceptable for signing bills and they decided that it is.
Remember that lots of people are actually paralyzed but otherwise mentally competent, and they need to sign as much stuff as anybody. It’s perfectly fine for them to say, “here, sign my name on this” and as long as everybody agrees that it’s OK, that’s perfectly fine and legal.
For the past several years, I’ve been doing something called an “electronic signature” when I file my taxes and such. Clearly, there are ways to sign things that don’t require fingers and ink.
However, I thought the president signing legislation might be different in that the signing requirement is in the Constitution, and people can be sticklers about what the word “sign” means.
Of course, the flip side of “autopenning” routine crap is that presidents generally use a multiplicity of pens to sign landmark legislation, so as to create multiple “souvenir” pens that were used to sign the bill. Obama used 22 pens to sign the ACA, following a tradition that goes back at least as far as FDR:
After working at a law office all day, that PDF makes me want to vomit right on the screen so I only read the first two pages.
At first blush I don’t see why “sign” in a constitutional text would mean something different than what it means to “sign” any other document. I can legally authorize the homeless guy down the road to sign my name to a document. He then has become my agent for that particular purpose and it’s as good as me signing it.
Also an electronic signature should be good so long as is a customary way of signing other documents.
I’m not a lawyer, but the legal theory I’ve heard (please fight my ignorance if I’m wrong) is that a signature is a distinct act of conscious volition which demonstrates willing assent to the instrument being signed. Hence, a signature doesn’t have to be a version of your name, or even ink. With the idea of legal agency, the signature can be made by another in your name, since you consented in advance.
The signature isn’t the mark or the way the mark is made, it’s the act of making the mark and the state of mind behind it.
That’s my understanding of it too, based admittedly on what I’ve read casually.
It’s sort of like the so-called “common law name change” - in theory, your name is whatever name you actually use and are recognized by, driver’s license, passport, birth certificate, marriage license, etc. be damned, but it’s very hard to convince bureaucrats and customer service reps that you actually are Hubert Q. St. James Arthur Humperdink III and not John Albert Smith like your driver’s license says.
Likewise, if I wanted to get a custom stamp made of two heart symbols and a squiggly line and say that’s my signature, it’s probably legal in the sense that if I stamp the signature line of a legal document with it, it’s probably valid in theory. The problem is that you will have a very tough time convincing the minimum-wage staffer at the passport office that you don’t actually have to sign with an ink pen or even have your signature be based on your name at all. If they actually accepted it, I couldn’t turn around and then deny I signed it on the grounds that such a “signature” is not a signature at all and thus the document is void.
Military forms often have your last name first. Because of this, my signature became last-name-first as well. When I bought a house, I signed all the documents with my normal signature- same pen strokes as always.
The notary threw a fit! He said I absolutely had to sign in the format that my name was printed, including my middle initial (and JUST the initial!), or it wasn’t legal. I had a hell of a time arguing otherwise, so we just reprinted everything (took about 30 minutes) and started from the top.
So now, my mortgage papers have a set of pen strokes that look nothing like my signature. That’s what you get when you try to test with the system, folks. 30 minutes of lost time and pissed off public agent.
One of William Safire’s books on the Nixon presidency (“Before the Fall”?) has an anecdote on when Nixon decided to veto a bill, they had to ask just does a POTUS actually veto it. Write something? Write Nothing? Rip it up?
Some State’s have an actual stamp, but I’m pretty sure the Prez doesn’t. He Vetos by sending the bill back to the originating chamber unmarked, along with a listing of his objections to the Bill.
(or if Congress is in recess, he can do a pocket veto and just not sign the bill at all, but that doesn’t involve a stamp either).