Meese Announces West Publishing Deal: Presidential Signing Statements Enter U.S. Code Legislative History

Opening

On February 25, 1986, Attorney General Edwin Meese III told an audience at the National Press Club that the Reagan administration had reached an agreement with West Publishing Company to include presidential signing statements in the “Legislative History” section of U.S. Code Congressional and Administrative News (USCCAN) — the standard reference work courts consult when interpreting federal statutes. The announcement was the public execution of a strategy laid out three weeks earlier in an OLC memo titled “Using Presidential Signing Statements to Make Fuller Use of the President’s Constitutionally Assigned Role in the Process of Enacting Law,” drafted by Samuel Alito (then a 35-year-old Deputy Assistant Attorney General, future Supreme Court justice). The West deal and the Alito memo together converted the presidential signing statement from a ceremonial instrument into an engine of statutory reinterpretation and pre-emptive executive nullification — a tool that would be wielded in Reagan’s remaining two years for 250+ statements, by GHW Bush for 228, by Clinton for 381, and most notoriously by Bush II for 161 statements challenging 1,100+ provisions.

What Happened / Key Facts

The Alito memo (February 5, 1986) is the foundational document. Circulating to the Litigation Strategy Working Group of the OLC, Alito articulated three goals:

1. Counter legislative history: Use signing statements to provide the executive’s own interpretation of statutory language, contesting the conventional rule that committee reports and floor statements control ambiguity.
2. Assert constitutional objections: Identify provisions the administration believes are unconstitutional, laying groundwork for non-enforcement.
3. Guide subordinate officials: Direct executive-branch agencies on how to interpret and implement the statute.

Alito acknowledged the strategy was novel and potentially controversial: “the president’s understanding of the bill should be just as important as that of Congress.” He recommended the strategy be piloted carefully to build judicial receptivity before expanding into broad use.

The West Publishing deal was the critical amplification mechanism. USCCAN was the most widely used commercial compilation of federal legislative history; trial lawyers, judges, and academics consulted it routinely. Including the signing statement alongside committee reports gave the executive interpretation formal placement in the corpus judges would encounter when researching a statute — without any separate legal or procedural vetting.

Why This Event Matters

The 1986 signing-statement reform created an entirely new mechanism of executive-branch self-empowerment:

1. Interpretive displacement. Prior to 1986, signing statements were ceremonial and occasional. The Alito-Meese reform repositioned them as systematic contestants to congressional intent. By the time of Koons Buick v. Nigh (2004), Justices Scalia and Thomas were citing signing statements as controlling authority for statutory interpretation.

2. Constitutional non-enforcement predicate. The most consequential use has been what Meese called “interpretive” signing statements but which are functionally veto-substitutes: the President signs the bill but announces he will not enforce provisions he considers unconstitutional. Bush II’s 800+ “interpretive” challenges (formally catalogued by Charlie Savage in 2006 Boston Globe reporting that led to a Pulitzer Prize) included the McCain Detainee Amendment (2005) banning torture — which Bush signed while simultaneously issuing a statement reserving the right to disregard it on commander-in-chief grounds.

3. Cheney-Addington institutionalization. David Addington in the Bush II Office of the Vice President expanded the mechanism systematically. The signing statement became the companion instrument to OLC torture and surveillance memos: OLC memos created internal executive-branch authority; signing statements created external legal ambiguity that constrained congressional and judicial pushback. Together they constituted the administrative-capture architecture that Worker U and AC’s committed entries document as the pattern underlying the post-2001 surveillance and intelligence-authority expansion.

4. ABA condemnation (2006). The American Bar Association’s 2006 Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements 2006-07-24–aba-condemns-bush-800-signing-statements-nullifyin called the Bush practice “contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers.” The condemnation had no practical effect; Obama reduced the volume but preserved the structure, Trump I used them for 56 statements, Biden for 27, and Trump II has resumed aggressive use since January 2025.

The direct line from Alito’s 1986 OLC memo to Alito’s 2022 Dobbs opinion for the Roberts Court is itself a data point in the longitudinal unitary-executive project.

Broader Context

Meese’s February 25 press club speech was ostensibly about gun control (the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 had just been signed), and the West announcement was presented as a procedural afterthought. Coverage at the time (Washington Post, February 26, 1986) treated it as a minor institutional development. The strategic significance was not widely understood outside the administrative-law academy until the George W. Bush signing-statement controversy erupted 20 years later.

West Publishing was acquired by Thomson Corporation in 1996 (now Thomson Reuters); USCCAN continues to include signing statements. No subsequent administration — Clinton, Bush II, Obama, Trump I, Biden, Trump II — has rescinded the 1986 publication agreement. Each has used it.

Research Gaps

• Full Alito OLC paper trail — other 1985-87 memos related to signing-statement strategy
• Negotiation record between DOJ and West Publishing that led to the inclusion
• Correlative review of first-wave Reagan signing statements (1986-88) and subsequent judicial citation

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