Throughout history, presidents and congresses have jockeyed for control over war powers. Article I of the Constitution grants Congress the exclusive authority to declare war, while Article II names the President as “Commander in Chief” of the army, navy and militia. The jockeying reached a watershed moment of congressional assertiveness with the passage of the 1973 War Powers Act. Since then, however, presidential war-making power has been in a state of near-constant expansion—an expansion only accelerated by overseas counterterrorism actions and recent presidential military actions in Libya and Syria.
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A new authorization for use of military force against terrorists is constitutionally desirable. But Congress has even more powerful tools to shape the trajectory of this fight for the better.
This Office of Legal Counsel test for unilateral uses of force provides no meaningful constraint on presidential power.
The opinion on the April 2018 airstrikes against Syrian chemical-weapons facilities follows straightforwardly from Obama-era legal opinions, including one we did not know about until today.
On Thursday, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued the following memorandum opinion on the April 2018 U.S. airstrikes against three Syrian chemical-weapons facilities.
We conducted a public opinion survey that found that Americans are sensitive to considerations of necessity, proportionality, and congressional authorization when evaluating whether the use of force is a justified response to a military threat from a foreign country. But what if the threat in question isn’t a conventional military one?
Last Wednesday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard testimony about the Corker-Kaine AUMF proposal, S.J. Res. 59, from former State Department legal adviser John B. Bellinger and Georgetown law professor Rita M. Siemion. Sen.
We set out to design a set of surveys to measure the extent to which public opinion—or, perhaps more accurately, the public’s moral intuition—aligns with legal considerations regarding the use of force. Our results surprised us.
The New York Times editorial board thinks so.
Does Congress still have war powers?
The new draft AUMF promotes greater transparency and congressional involvement in deciding on the scope of U.S. counterterrorism operations, but it primarily serves to give Congress political leverage. As a legal matter, it leaves the president firmly in control.