The American Bar Association yesterday approved a resolution condemning President Bush's practice of writing exceptions to laws he's just signed.

Delegates at the ABA's annual meeting voted 272-99 to reject an effort to postpone consideration and then approved the resolution on a voice vote.

The lawyers condemned the practice of attaching presidential statements to bills as "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers."

The resolution was directed at a misuse of presidential bill attachments to "disregard or decline to enforce" all or parts of laws.

The president must accept bills in their entirety or veto them, according to the resolution adopted by delegates representing 410,000 lawyers and other ABA members.

Bush has vetoed only one bill, on stem cell research, but has written exceptions to about 800 legislative provisions — more than all previous presidents combined.

In the Bush bill-signing statements, he reserves the right to revise, interpret or disregard measures on national security and constitutional grounds.

A call yesterday to the White House was not immediately returned.

"The constitution says the president has two choices: either sign the bill or veto it. And if you sign it, you can't have your hand behind your back with your fingers crossed," Michael Greco, ABA outgoing president, said after the vote.

Greco had assembled a bipartisan task force to review presidential signing statements, which issued a report late last month critical of Bush's use of the statements and described the challenges as overstepping his authority.

The bar delegates urged Congress to require the president to promptly submit copies of any signing statements, along with a report giving the legal basis for his objections.

The resolution also proposes that Congress create a system allowing courts to review any claim by the president that he has the authority to disregard or decline to enforce a law he signs or interpret the law in a different way than Congress had intended.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., submitted a bill late last month seeking to ensure that signing statements aren't used to rewrite legislation or veto parts of bills.

In the bill, Specter noted that after the signing of the USA Patriot Act renewal, Bush wrote a statement reserving the right to withhold information from Congress under certain circumstances, including the need to protect national security.

A statement issued after the signing of a bill banning the use of torture on detainees held in the United States also caught Specter's attention.