Presentment Clause - Exclusion of Sundays

Exclusion of Sundays

The ten day period for the presidential review of legislation excludes Sundays. Some scholars believe this exclusion was not for religious reasons, but intended to support a deliberative process in which the President would consult and seek advice regarding the merits of the proposed law. For instance, Jaynie Randall has stated that because the blue laws of various states restricted travel on Sundays, to allow a full ten days of consideration between the President and his advisors, the drafters of the Constitution excluded Sundays from the review period. However, Justice Brewer, speaking for a unanimous Supreme Court in Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 457 (1892), cited the Presentment Clause as a clear example of why “no purpose of action against religion can be imputed to any legislation, state or national, because this is a religious people.” Specifically, the Court stated:

Even the Constitution of the United States, which is supposed to have little touch upon the private life of the individual . . . provides in Article I, Section 7, a provision common to many constitutions, that the executive shall have ten days (Sundays excepted) within which to determine whether he will approve or veto a bill. There is no dissonance in these declarations. There is a universal language pervading them all, having one meaning. They affirm and reaffirm that this is a religious nation.

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Famous quotes containing the words exclusion of, exclusion and/or sundays:

    All men, in the abstract, are just and good; what hinders them, in the particular, is, the momentary predominance of the finite and individual over the general truth. The condition of our incarnation in a private self, seems to be, a perpetual tendency to prefer the private law, to obey the private impulse, to the exclusion of the law of the universal being.
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    In sunburnt parks where Sundays lie,
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