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Questions for Speaker Pelosi

Netroots Nation 2008
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Preventing Courts from considering Signing Statements
Posted by jmhmail 07/07/2008 12:00 AM PDT
It is within the power of Congress to amend the Evidence Code and the Rules of Court to prevent lawyers from citing presidential signing statements in their pleadings, and prevent federal courts from giving them evidentiary weight. (As with a "decertified" decision of the California Supreme Court, they would be free to make the same arguments - they just can't mention that those arguments were in a signing statement.) Will you be seeking to enact such legislation in the near future?
Idea # 78Category/Tags : Issues: Domestic (121) signing (2)  statement  abuse (2)  
Comments
shane.flannelly.king
07/09/2008
Interesting, I like this approach.

How effective and/or appropriate would it be for the legislature to decide what may be given evidentiary weight?
jmhmail
07/09/2008
It is totally appropriate for legislatures to determine the rules for allowing (or excluding) evidence. In California, for example, the entire Evidence Code is a set of laws passed by the state legislature.

Please note - this would not prevent lawyers or judges from reading presidential signing statements, nor would it prohibit lawyers from making the same arguments. Judges could use the same reasoning that in a Presidential signing statement if they found it persuasive. What they could NOT do would be to mention the source, or claim the presidential signing statement required the court to construe a law in a particular fashion.

Short version: presidents have veto power, and Congress has the ability to over-ride vetoes. Granting evidentiary weight to a presidential signing statement allows the president to in essence veto a bill without giving Congress its Constitutionally-mandated right to over-ride that de-facto veto. This should be banned.
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