The American Presidency Project puts the definition simply: "A 'Signing Statement' is a written comment issued by a President at the time of signing legislation." The Congressional Research Service, in the January 2012 edition of its report on the subject, is more specific about what those comments do. Signing statements, it writes, are "official pronouncements issued by the President contemporaneously to the signing of a bill into law that, in addition to commenting on the law generally, have been used to forward the President's interpretation of the statutory language; to assert constitutional objections to the provisions contained therein; and, concordantly, to announce that the provisions of the law will be administered in a manner that comports with the administration's conception of the President's constitutional prerogatives."
Nothing in the Constitution provides for them. As CRS puts it: "There is no explicit constitutional provision authorizing the issuance of presidential signing statements." Article I "provides only that the President 'shall sign' a bill of which he approves", while a veto requires the measure be returned "with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated".
Where They Came From
They are not new. CRS records that "Presidents have issued such statements since the Monroe Administration", and dates the first controversy to 1830, when Andrew Jackson objected to an appropriations bill for road examinations and surveys; in CRS's account Jackson declared that the Detroit-to-Chicago road "should not extend beyond the territory of Michigan", and CRS records that a House report criticised the action, "characterizing it as in effect constituting a line item veto". Presidents Polk and Pierce "apologized for the issuance of signing statements"; Grant, in 1875, called his own an "unusual method of conveying the notice of approval".
Then the practice normalised. Signing statements remained comparatively rare through the end of the nineteenth century, CRS writes, "but had become common instruments by 1950"; Truman issued "nearly 16 signing statements per year, on average". The specific use that generates modern controversy — the statement that raises a constitutional objection — "began in earnest during the Reagan Administration".
The Legal Status of Signing Statements
A signing statement is not law, and CRS is direct about why: "Congress has not authorized the President to speak with the force of law through signing statements. So, although signing statements may influence or even control agency implementation of statutes, it is the implementation, and not the signing statement itself, that would be measured against the statute's requirements. At most, signing statements might be considered analogous to informal agency actions, entitled to respect only to the extent that they have the power to persuade."
A provision the President objects to stays on the books. Even where a President refuses to enforce one, CRS notes, "the provision nonetheless retains its full legal character and will remain actionable, either in the judicial or congressional oversight contexts".
Do Courts Rely on Them?
The Reagan administration tried hard to make them count. A 1986 Office of Legal Counsel memorandum drafted by Samuel A. Alito, Jr. announced a "primary objective" to "ensure that Presidential signing statements assume their rightful place in the interpretation of legislation", and Attorney General Edwin Meese III arranged with the West Publishing Company for signing statements to be printed alongside legislative histories in the U.S. Code Congressional and Administrative News.
It did not work. CRS's finding, as of that January 2012 edition, is that "it does not appear that courts have incorporated signing statements in the manner hoped for by the Reagan Administration", and its summary of the case law is blunter still: "Ultimately, it does not appear that the courts have relied on signing statements in any appreciably substantive fashion." The Supreme Court's references to signing statements in Bowsher v. Synar and INS v. Chadha "were perfunctory in nature". In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Court "made no reference whatsoever to the President's signing statement" in deciding a question about how the Detainee Treatment Act applied to pending habeas petitions of Guantanamo detainees. And CRS records that in U.S. v. Stevens "the Court noted that a presidential signing statement that pledged to confine prosecutions under an animal cruelty statute to only those cases of 'wanton cruelty to animals designed to appeal to a prurient interest in sex' was not sufficient to save the otherwise unconstitutionally overbroad statute".
The George W. Bush Controversy
The dispute over George W. Bush's signing statements was about their content, not their number. CRS's counts: Reagan issued 250 signing statements, 86 of them (34%) raising objections; George H. W. Bush 228, of which 107 (47%) raised objections; Clinton 381, of which 70 (18%) did; and George W. Bush 161, of which 127 (79%) "contain some type of challenge or objection". So Bush issued fewer signing statements than any of the three presidents before him. Asked directly whether Bush issued more signing statements than any other president, the American Presidency Project answers: "No, Bill Clinton issued many more signing statements. The controversy was about the kind of signing statements Bush issued."
What was different was density. Bush's 127 objecting statements "were typified by multiple constitutional and statutory objections, containing challenges to more than 1,000 distinct provisions of law". Two of the best-known: in the statement accompanying the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005, Bush said provisions requiring the executive branch to submit reports and audits to Congress would be construed "in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information the disclosure of which could impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative processes of the Executive, or the performance of the Executive's constitutional duties"; and in the statement on the law carrying the McCain Amendment, which CRS describes as prohibiting the use of torture, or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of prisoners, he said the executive branch would construe that provision "in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief".
A widely repeated figure needs its own correction. The Boston Globe reported on April 30, 2006 that Bush "has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office"; in a clarification issued four days later, the American Presidency Project records, the paper said Bush "has claimed the authority to bypass more than 750 statutes, which were provisions contained in about 125 bills". Statements, bills and provisions are three different units, and the argument has run them together.
In 2006 the American Bar Association's Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements and the Separation of Powers Doctrine reported on the practice. CRS and the American Presidency Project render its finding in different words, so both are given here. CRS quotes the report as declaring such statements "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers" when they "claim the authority or state the intention to disregard or decline to enforce all or part of a law ... or to interpret such a law in a manner inconsistent with the clear intent of Congress"; CRS dates it to August 2006. The American Presidency Project dates it to July 2006, describes the body as an ABA "Blue Ribbon Task Force" rather than the ABA itself, and reports the finding as one that these presidential assertions of constitutional authority "undermine the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers". What does not vary is the condition: the objection is to that class of statement, not to signing statements as such. Bills to restrain the practice were introduced in the 109th, 110th and 111th Congresses. CRS discusses each of them as introduced, and judged of the three in the 111th Congress that "it does not appear that any of these proposals would appreciably alter or confine the President's ability to issue signing statements".
The practice continued afterwards, at lower volume. As of the January 2012 edition of the CRS report, the Obama administration had "used the signing statement as a vehicle for asserting constitutional objections to duly enacted statutes with significantly less frequency than prior administrations", issuing 20 signing statements of which 10 (50%) contained constitutional challenges.
How to Find Signing Statements
They are published in the Compilation of Presidential Documents. GovInfo describes that collection as "the official publication of materials released by the White House Press Secretary", published by the Office of the Federal Register at the National Archives "under the authority of the Federal Register Act", and lists "Statements regarding bill signings and vetoes" among the material it carries. It comprises the Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents from January 20, 2009 to the present and, before that, the Weekly Compilation. The American Presidency Project maintains a separate searchable archive of signing statements running from Hoover in 1929.
For the executive branch's own legal reasoning, the documents to read are Office of Legal Counsel opinions: OLC produced "The Legal Significance of Presidential Signing Statements" in 1993 and "Presidential Authority to Decline to Execute Unconstitutional Statutes" in 1994, the latter advising that a President who, "exercising his independent judgment, determines both that a provision would violate the Constitution and that it is probable that the Court would agree with him", has "the authority to decline to execute the statute".
Drafted from primary source documents by LegislationPatch's automated research pipeline, then reviewed, verified, and edited by James Shearn, Editor. Every figure and citation is checked against the official text before publication. See our editorial standards and AI disclosure.