Latest in War Powers
Congress has told the Trump administration that it has to produce a public war powers report by March 1. And if that doesn’t happen, private citizens can now sue over it.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on Feb. 28 at 8:30 a.m. on the Trump administration's policies on Iran, Iraq and the use of force. The committee will hear testimony from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The hearing will be the first opportunity for lawmakers to press Pompeo on the Trump administration’s legal justification for the strike against Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Suleimani.
You can watch a livestream of the hearing here and below.
A valuable new database of war powers reports is available for scholars—but absent congressional action, the type of document it is collecting may not be long for this world.
The outcome of the war—and the means necessary to achieve it—led to the war’s most noteworthy constitutional precedents.
A new Lawfare Institute e-book, "Context and Consequences of the Soleimani Strike: A Lawfare Compilation," is now available on Kindle.
The responses to President Trump’s decision to authorize the drone strike on Soleimani have largely split along party lines.
The American drone strike last night that killed Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian Quds Force, is a seismic event in U.S.-Iranian relations—and for the broader Middle East. We put together an emergency podcast, drawing on the resources of both Lawfare and the Brookings Institution and reflecting the depth of the remarkable collaboration between the two.
A new set of essays explores the state and possible trajectory of modern war powers.
Recent moves and countermoves by the U.S. and Iran in the Persian Gulf over the past few months have increased speculation about the prospect of war in the region. Some members of Congress, including a few Republicans, have stated that the president cannot use military force against the Islamic Republic without the approval of the legislature.
In the course of researching a book, I’ve come across many episodes that Benjamin Wittes and I like to call “Weird War Powers $h*t.” One of my favorites is a story about American constitutional war powers and actual $h*t. It’s a story about very expensive bird-$h*t, or guano, and how one of the 19th century’s most important thinkers on war powers nearly stumbled the nation, figuratively speaking, into a giant pile of it.
Daniel Webster and War Powers