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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On this date in 1854, the U.S. Navy bombarded and torched the town of Greytown, in present-day Nicaragua. The story behind a resulting federal court opinion reveals much about how presidential naval powers and congressional checks operated in the mid-19th century.
In a new Washington Quarterly article, the authors argue that the post-World War II expansion of the presidential alliance powers enables President Trump to weaken alliances from within.
A 1962 Justice Department memo offers a rare glimpse of the legal rationale for covert warfare.
In 1957, Congress granted President Eisenhower authorization to use force in the Middle East. The law is still on the books 62 years later.
Eisenhower believed that a congressional authorization of force, including the possible use of nuclear weapons, to protect Taiwan from Communist China would help prevent all-out war from breaking out across the Taiwan Strait.
Jan. 10 marks 81 years since Congress defeated a proposed constitutional amendment to add a referendum requirement to the war declaration power.
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.