PRESIDENTIAL ACTION
Article I,
Section 7, of the Constitution provides in part that every Bill which shall
have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it
becomes a Law, be presented to the President of the
In actual practice, the Clerk, or the Secretary of the Senate when the bill originated in that body, delivers the original enrolled bill to a clerk at the White House and obtains a receipt. The fact of the delivery is then reported to the House by the Clerk. Delivery to a White House clerk has customarily been regarded as presentation to the President and as commencing the 10-day constitutional period for presidential action.
Copies of the enrolled bill usually are transmitted by the White House to the various departments interested in the subject matter so that they may advise the President on the issues surrounding the bill.
If the President approves the bill, he signs it and usually writes the word ‘‘approved’’ and the date. However, the Constitution requires only that the President sign it.
The bill may become law without the President’s signature by virtue of the constitutional provision that if the President does not return a bill with objections within 10 days (excluding Sundays) after it has been presented to the President, it becomes law as if the President had signed it.
However, if Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, it does not become law. This is known as a ‘‘pocket veto’’. That is, the bill does not become law even though the President has not sent his objections to the Congress. The Congress has interpreted the President’s ability to pocket veto a bill to be limited to final adjournment of a Congress where Congress has finally prevented return by the originating House and not to interim adjournments or first session adjournments where the originating House of Congress through its agents is able to receive a veto message for subsequent reconsideration by that Congress when it reconvenes.
The extent of pocket veto authority has not been definitively decided by the courts. Notice of the signing of a bill by the President is sent by message to the House in which it originated and that House informs the other, although this action is not necessary for the act to be valid. The action is also noted in the Congressional Record.
A bill becomes law on the date of approval or passage over the
President’s veto, unless it expressly provides a different effective date.