Above the Law

No, I don't mean Steven Seagal. I am talking, of course, about President Bush's use of so-called "signing statements" to claim that he is not required to enforce laws duly authorized by both houses of Congress and signed by him.

As reported July 24 in the New York Times,

The American Bar Association said Sunday that President Bush was flouting the Constitution and undermining the rule of law by claiming the power to disregard selected provisions of bills that he signed.

In a comprehensive report, a bipartisan 11-member panel of the bar association said Mr. Bush had used such “signing statements” far more than his predecessors, raising constitutional objections to more than 800 provisions in more than 100 laws on the ground that they infringed on his prerogatives.

* * * *

In signing a statutory ban on torture and other national security laws, Mr. Bush reserved the right to disregard them.

The bar association panel said the use of signing statements in this way was “contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers.” From the dawn of the Republic, it said, presidents have generally understood that, in the words of George Washington, a president “must approve all the parts of a bill, or reject it in toto.”

Legal Group Says Bush Undermines Law by Ignoring Select Parts of Bills, New York Times, July 24, 2006.

In other words, George W. Bush has stated, on more than 800 occasions (almost once a day), that he, as President, is above the law.

The full text of the ABA Report is 34 pages long and is available as a .PDF file on the ABA's web site at Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements and the Separation of Powers Doctrine.