Have any of the SCOTUS justices made remarks regarding the

signing statements? They are blatantly UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

That is the entire point of the signing statements. To start a legal challenge at the SCOTUS level, where his bought-and-paid-for cronies will rubber stamp his bullshit.

In favor of signing statements?

Alito
Scalia
Thomas
Roberts?




Against?

Souter
Ginsberg
Stevens



How would the other two rule?

them; SCOTUS (presumably) rules on the application of the clear text of the law as passed by Congress. First Congress passes the law; the the executive, if that's where responsibility for implementing it lies, has to interpret it in order to apply it; sometimes the interpretation is pretty unquestionable, other times you wonder how the executive comes to its interpretation, other times you wonder how anybody could come to any interpretation. Then, if people don't like that interpretation, off to court they go.

The problem is that the text or intent is not always clear. Then the courts turn to the legislative history, among other things. It's the reasoning and basis for the vote taken in producing the law, and shows what those approving it intended for it to be and how it was to be interpreted. The problem is that the official legislative history is sometimes a fiction; Senators and congressfolk can have things inserted into the record as though they were said on the floor during debate, when in fact they were edited after the fact, or the speaker may not have actually been in the room when his speech was supposedly "given". This can "spin" the meaning of the law after it's passed in an attempt to alter how the courts will interpret it--in effect, alter the legislative intent of the law retroactively. The other problem is that the legislative history is often fractious: different people interpret it in different ways, yet all vote for the language.

The signing statements are the flip side of the legislative history: the legislative history presumably shows what Congress intended. The presidential signing statements are how the prez understands the scope and intent of the law, and goes to the law-making process because given a different understanding he might well have vetoed it. Presumably that isn't a trivial issue unless it's clear Congress would have overriden the veto. The statements are a meaningful clue as to how the executive branch will interpret the law, but that's a different issue entirely. How important such statements are in how the judicial interprets the law is still an open question, IIRC. The signing statements do not determine what the courts will decide any more than the legislative history does. They are part of a bit of a power struggle, however, one that goes back a good ways, most visible in the amending of the legislative history in the official Congressional Record. It's something the courts, maybe ultimately SCOTUS (but maybe not) will have to sort through on a law-by-law basis. Soon enough a standard yardstick of interpretation will rise as to how much weight the signing statements merit, I would hope.

:popcorn: for how it all turns out. But it'll take more than a couple of years, so we'd better have large bags of :popcorn:

an issue the Executive and Legislative branches are free to weigh in on their own interpretations concerning the Constitution.