Congressional Efforts To Restrict Signing Statements
Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa. ) introduced the Presidential Signing Statements Act of 2006 on July 26, 2006. The bill would:
- Instruct all state and federal courts to ignore presidential signing statements. ("No State or Federal court shall rely on or defer to a presidential signing statement as a source of authority.")
- Instruct the Supreme Court to allow the U.S. Senate or U.S. House of Representatives to file suit in order to determine the constitutionality of signing statements.
The bill was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Specter formerly chaired, on the day it was introduced. As with all unpassed bills, it expired with the end of the 109th United States Congress on 9 December 2006.
Specter reintroduced the legislation with the Presidential Signing Statements Act of 2007, but it died in the same committee.
Read more about this topic: Signing Statement
Famous quotes containing the words efforts, restrict and/or statements:
“It’s immoral to steal, but you can take things.
The dignity of his office is never impaired by the absence of efforts on his part to maintain it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“The expectation that every neurotic phenomenon can be cured may, I suspect, be derived from the layman’s belief that the neuroses are something quite unnecessary which have no right whatever to exist. Whereas in fact they are severe, constitutionally fixed illnesses, which rarely restrict themselves to only a few attacks but persist as a rule over long periods throughout life.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“There was books too.... One was “Pilgrim’s Progress,” about a man that left his family it didn’t say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)