Reply #10: Presidential Signing Statements, and Alito's Role in Them,

[slipslidingaway]

Are Questioned

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/14/politics/politicsspecial1/14statements.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Published: January 14, 2006

"Presidents since at least Andrew Jackson have issued statements as they signed legislation into law, but Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, helped to introduce an innovation in that practice when he was a lawyer in the Reagan administration.

The new twist, as Edwin Meese III, then the attorney general, explained in a Feb. 25, 1986, speech, was to urge courts to look to the president's signing statement for evidence of "what that statute really means." Earlier presidential signing statements were, by contrast, bland proclamations, instructions to subordinates about how to execute a new law or a statement of disagreement with a part of a law...

Three weeks before Mr. Meese's speech, Mr. Alito, then a deputy assistant attorney general, submitted a memorandum to a Justice Department working group about what he called a novel proposal. Partly analytic and partly strategic, the memorandum considered how to accomplish Mr. Meese's goal of expanding presidential power in this area.

Mr. Alito wrote that "our primary objective is to ensure that presidential signing statements assume their rightful place in the interpretation of legislation." This would, he wrote, "increase the power of the executive to shape the law."

Mr. Alito predicted that "Congress is likely to resent the fact that the president will get in the last word on questions of interpretation."


http://www.archives.gov/news/samuel-alito/accession-060-89-269/Acc060-89-269-box6-SG-LSWG-AlitotoLSWG-Feb1986.pdf

"February 5, 1986

TO: The Litigation Strategy Working Group

FROM: Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
Deputy Assistant Attorney General
Office of Legal Counsel

SUBJ: Using Presidential Signing Statement to Make
Fuller Use of the President's Constitutionally
Assigned Role in the Process of Enacting Law.

At our last meeting, I was asked to draft a preliminary
proposal for implementing the idea of making fuller use of Presidential
signing statements. This memorandum is a rough first
effort in that direction..."


Alito & the Point of No Return
By Nat Parry
January 9, 2006

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/010906a.html


Roll call on Alito confirmation

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2&vote=00001