According to a task force from the American Bar Associations, President Bush's tendency to add "signing statements" to every law he signed (in lieu of a veto), where he typically would make the statement that the law didn't apply the executive branch as Bush "reserves the right to revise, interpret or disregard measures on national security and constitutional grounds."
Presidents in the pass have also issued signing statements but whether of the nature of Bush's is unclear. However have never issued them with the frequency of Bush. At most, Presidents have used the ability rarely and in most cases don't try to enforce it. Bush has added 800+ signing statements in his 5 and a half years of office, compared to 600 statements by all previous presidents in the past 225 years.
Considering the legislative branch (Congress) was designed to create the laws and the executive branch (the President) is meant to enforce the law, while the Judicial Branch (Supreme Court) is meant to interpret the law, this seems like a no brainer to me since his states basically reserved the right for Bush to act as Congress or the Supreme Court when he saw fit to do so.
Even though Congress has claimed concern over this proactive, in reality they have done very little to counter it and don't seem to really care about the attempts on the part of the Bush Administration to grow and gather power. Naive thinking by the Republican Congress considering that a Republican may not always remain in office.
More discouraging, the ABA report said President Reagan was the first to use the statements as a strategic weapon, and that it was encouraged by then-administration lawyer Samuel Alito -- now the newest Supreme Court justice.
(source)
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