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A Perspective On Bush’s Wiretapping…

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Supreme Court

Listen, Alito is probably going to be confirmed, but should he?

As a young Justice Department lawyer, Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. tried to help tip the balance of power between Congress and the White House a little more in favor of the executive branch.

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration, like other White Houses before and after, chafed at the reality that Congress’s reach on the meaning of laws extends beyond the words of statutes passed on Capitol Hill. Judges may turn to the trail of statements lawmakers left behind in the Congressional Record when trying to glean the intent behind a law. The White House left no comparable record.

In a Feb. 5, 1986, draft memo, Alito, then deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, outlined a strategy for changing that. It laid out a case for having the president routinely issue statements about the meaning of statutes when he signs them into law.

Interesting…


This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006 and is filed under Supreme Court. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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