Not taking the ABA seriously, Part Two

A few weeks ago, I criticized an ABA report on presidential signing statements, and suggested that the report constituted “more evidence that the ABA should not be taken seriously.” The next day, I linked to a Washington Post editorial that found no merit in the ABA’s view that President Bush’s use of signing statements usurps legislative powers.

Since then, the ABA’s position has been rejected by Walter Dellinger, the liberal Solicitor General during part of the Clinton administration. Dellinger, along with seven other Clinton administration veterans now teaching at major law schools, found that “the ABA Report gets it exactly backwards. The signing statement is a good thing: a manifestation of the Executive’s intentions. . . .”

Next it was the turn of the distinguished, ultra-liberal constitutional law scholar and practitioner Lawrence Tribe. He expressed his “strong disagreement” with the ABA task force’s report, arguing that “the ABA panel has missed the boat.”

The left’s capture of the ABA is another example of baby boom liberals marching through our institutions only to find that, by virtue of the trample, they have rendered the institutions largely irrelevant. The fact that the Washington Post and Professors Tribe and Dellinger won’t salute here renders this march particularly futile and pathetic.

Via Ed Whelan at NRO’s Bench Memos.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses