You are cordially invited to join the audience of a special Justice Talking taping at the University of Pennsylvania next Friday, November 17th.  Host Margot Adler will lead our guest speakers in debate and take questions from the audience.  Check out the details below and reserve your place now at http://www.justicetalking.org/joinaudience.asp or by calling 215-573-8919.  It’s free!

Presidential Signing Statements

Friday November 17, 2006

3:00 p.m. – 4:15 p.m.

 

The Wharton School

John M. Huntsman Hall

3730 Walnut Street

 
Presidents have long used signing statements to add their views on legislation they dislike but won’t veto. President Nixon used them to point out excessive expenditures in spending bills.  President Carter used them to make sure that Congress did not encroach on executive duties established by the Constitution. But President George W. Bush has used them more frequently than any other President, over 700 times since taking office. On this edition of Justice Talking we look at the use and abuse of presidential signing statements.

 with special guests

HON. MICKEY EDWARDS, a lecturer at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the executive director of the Aspen Institute-Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership. He is also an advisor to the U.S. Department of State and a member of the Princeton Project on National Security.  He is a founding trustee of the Heritage Foundation, a former national chair of the American Conservative Union and director of policy advisory task forces for the Reagan presidential campaign, and he served as an Oklahoma congressman for 16 years.
 

CHRISTOPHER SCHROEDER, a professor of law and public policy studies and the director of the Program in Public Law at Duke University. Schroeder has served as deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel and chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee. He is co-chair of the Separation of Powers and Federalism issue group for the American Constitution Society’s Project on the Constitution in the 21st Century. Along with other former officials of the Office of Legal Counsel, Schroeder authored a statement on presidential signing statements that disagrees with some of the American Bar Association’s task force report on the same subject.

Can’t make it to the taping?  You can still contribute to the show by submitting a question that we might read during the debate.  Submit a question at http://www.justicetalking.org/joinaudience.asp or by calling 215-573-8919.

 
Thanks for tuning in,

 Laura Sider

Outreach Coordinator

215-573-8919

lsider@justicetalking.org       

NPR's Justice Talking is produced at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, and is made possible with support from the Annenberg Foundation.