Some of you may be aware of President Bush’s fondness for attaching “signing statements” to bills he signs into law. These statements frequently specify how the Executive Branch will interpret, implement, or simply ignore the new law.
A recent Cato commentary has a nice summary of the scope of the practice and the associated Constitutional issues.
Some trivia from the Cato article:
There is nothing new about a president adding a “statement on signing” to legislation he has approved. Since the country was founded, presidents have used these statements for relatively innocuous purposes: to thank supporters, explain their support for the bill or express satisfaction–or dissatisfaction–with legislation passed by Congress.[.]
Since he took office, Bush has used this device to object to more than 500 provisions in more than 100 pieces of legislation–nearly as many as the 575 signing statements issued by all of his predecessors combined. In these statements, the president often has claimed that the new laws violate the Constitution and signaled his intention not to enforce certain provisions, despite having signed them into law.