pocket veto

1. The indirect veto of a bill received by the President within ten days of the adjournment of Congress, effected by retaining the bill unsigned until Congress adjourns.
2. A similar action exercised by a state governor or other chief executive.

The implied veto of a bill by the President of the United States or by a state governor or other executive who simply holds the bill without signing it until the legislature has adjourned. For example, The President used the pocket veto to kill the crime bill. This expression dates from the 1830s and alludes to putting the unsigned bill inside one's pocket.

In the United States, before a bill that has passed the House and the Senate becomes a law the President must sign it. If he declines to sign a particular bill it automatically becomes law after ten congressional working days. However, if Congress adjourns before the required ten days have elapsed the bill is deemed not to have passed. The President has, in a sense, placed the bill in his pocket—thus a pocket veto.

— David Mervin

The pocket veto is the power of the President to veto a bill sent to him within the 10-day period prior to congressional adjournment, without any possibility of a congressional override. The Constitution (Article 1, Section 7) provides that if Congress passes a bill and sends it to the President, he has 10 days in which to veto the bill and return it with his objections. But if Congress adjourns within that 10-day period, the President cannot return the bill with a veto message and any bill that has already been sent to the President is automatically vetoed unless he decides to sign it into law. The end-of-session pocket veto (named for the practice of putting the bill in the President's pocket until Congress adjourns) cannot be overridden by a two-thirds vote of each chamber; it is irreversible. The President sends no message to Congress indicating his objections to the measure, nor does he return the bill to either chamber for further action. A new bill must be introduced and go through the entire legislative process.

In the Pocket Veto Case (1929), the Supreme Court decided that “adjournment” meant not only end-of-session adjournments but could also mean recesses, or district work periods, within a congressional session. The key issue was not whether Congress intended to return but whether its absence prevented return of the bill within the designated 10-day period.

Presidents have sometimes abused the pocket veto. They have killed measures when Congress adjourned or recessed for short periods, even when Congress intended to return within 10 days and could easily have received the President's regular veto message. Both Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford used the pocket veto during interim adjournments of a few days during a session of Congress—Nixon to kill a health care bill and Ford to veto vocational rehabilitation, farm labor, and wildlife refuge measures. Congress responded to this misuse of the pocket veto by designating officers in each chamber to receive veto messages from the President, thereby attempting to retain the ordinary veto system. In the 1970s Senate leaders began the practice of waiting until Congress returned from short recesses before sending bills it had passed to the White House in order to avoid the entire issue.

In 1974 the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C., ruling in Kennedy v. Sampson, barred the President's use of the pocket veto during short congressional recesses, provided an officer was appointed by Congress to receive an ordinary Presidential veto message.

See also Checks and balances; Veto power

Sources

• U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, Constitutionality of the President's Pocket Veto Power (92nd Cong., 1st sess., 1971).
• Clement Vose, “The Memorandum Pocket Veto”, Journal of Politics 26, no. 2 (May 1964): 397–405

Pocket Veto, an indirect veto by which a U.S. president negates legislation without affording Congress an opportunity for repassage by an overriding vote. The Constitution provides that measures presented by Congress to the president within ten days of adjournment and not returned by him before adjournment fail to become law. They are said to have been pocket vetoed. First employed by President James Madison, the pocket veto has been used by every president since Benjamin Harrison. Controversy over the practice has focused on the definition of "adjournment": presidential usage has included brief recesses, whereas congressional critics have argued that the term intends only lengthy adjournments.

Bibliography

Jones, Charles O. The Presidency in a Separated System. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1994.

Neustadt, Richard. Presidential Power and the Modern Presidency: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan. New York: Free Press, 1990.

Schlesinger Jr., Arthur M. The Imperial Presidency. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973.

Taft, William Howard. The Presidency: Its Duties, Its Powers, Its Opportunities, and Its Limitations. New York: Scribner, 1916.

Tugwell, Rexford G., and Thomas E. Cronin, eds. The Presidency Reappraised. New York: Praeger, 1974.

A means by which the President of the United States may effectively veto an act of Congress without exercising the presidential veto right. Under the U.S. Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 7, Cl. 2, the President must veto legislation within 10 days after it has been passed by both the Senate and the House of Representatives, or else the legislation will become law. However, if Congress adjourns before the end of the 10-day period the legislation will only become law if the President has signed it. Accordingly, the President may effectively veto legislation that was passed within the last 10 days of the congressional session merely by not signing it into law. 279 U.S. 655.

An automatic veto of a bill that occurs if the president or governor neither signs nor vetoes a bill within ten days of receiving it — as long as the legislature adjourns during that period. If the legislature convenes during that period, the bill will automatically become law. A pocket veto cannot be overridden by the legislature, though the bill can be reintroduced at the next legislative session.

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