Matthew Waxman is a law professor at Columbia Law School, where he co-chairs the Program on Law and National Security. He is also co-chair of the Cybersecurity Center at Columbia University’s Data Science Institute, as well as Adjunct Senior Fellow for Law and Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He previously served in senior policy positions at the State Department, Defense Department, and National Security Council. After graduating from Yale Law School, he clerked for Judge Joel M. Flaum of the U.S. Court of Appeals and Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter
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The Monroe Doctrine is a momentous example of the president’s vast constitutional power to set and communicate U.S. foreign policy—to include threatening war.
A review of Michael Beschloss, “Presidents of War” (Crown Books, 2018).
Nov. 11 is the centennial Armistice Day, remembered as the day the Great War ended, but as a matter of U.S. domestic law, it dragged on for three more years.
Nov. 4 is the anniversary of, by some measures, the U.S. military’s worst battlefield defeat ever—an incident that says a great deal about executive and legislative use of military power in the early republic.
The Whisky Rebellion was consequential for national power, and warrants reflection on its 224th anniversary.
Review of Craig Forcese, Destroying the Caroline: The Frontier Raid that Reshaped the Right to War (Irwin Law, 2018)
How a dispute between Harry Truman and congressional skeptics established presidential authorities that are unquestioned today.