By Beth Frigola, (202) 225-6906
Washington D.C., - Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-TX) took issue with the Democrat’s choice of subject matter at the first Judiciary Committee hearing of the 110th Congress.
“Presidential signing statements are a non-issue,” stated Congressman Smith. “Critics have launched a massive fishing expedition, but they have caught only the reddest of red herrings.”
Presidential signing statements do not bind the courts. They are an expression of the President’s views on legislation and have been used by just about every President in American history.
In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006) the Supreme Court made clear that courts can ignore presidential signing statements altogether. Furthermore, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service concluded last year that “a bill that is signed by the President retains its legal effect and character, irrespective of any pronouncements made in a signing statement, and remains available for interpretation by the courts …”
“This hearing is apparently motivated by the alarm some Members in the majority feel when a duly-elected President says what he thinks a statute means through a presidential signing statement, even when courts routinely ignore such statements or simply cite them when they agree with their own statutory interpretation,” noted Smith.
“One has the distinct feeling that this is really a policy debate,” Smith concluded. “If critics of signing statements agreed with the president on policy, we simply would not be here today.”
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