This seems to be a prime biscuit of discource now, and I am woefully ignorant of the specifics, and why the Chief Executive is given these powers. Can anyone illuminate the initial reasons for this, a primer ? And then, further, how this relates in the current course of international relations?
I know it’s a simple question , but rely on y’all to have a smashing incisive answer.
This covers a bit of the law behind the authority of the President to initiate war without the consent of congress.
Honestly, much of the other issues behind presidential powers are based on the notion of “executive privilege”, which was pulled straight out of the collective asses of past presidential administrations. Basically, it is a legal-sounding way to say that the president can interpret the law almost any way he chooses.
No, it isn’t. Executive privilege refers specifically to the right claimed by the executive branch to withhold information from the legislature. The first low-down scuzzball to claim this privilege was George Washington. The legal status of the doctrine remains murky because Presidents have largely chosen to bargain with Congress rather than face a possible Constitutional crisis or federal court case. There have been exceptions, though. The famous case of the Nixon Watergate tapes went to the Supreme Court. And while they rejected Nixon’s assertion of privilege based on the facts of that specific case, they affirmed the principle in the general sense.
The Constitution designates the President as Commander in Chief of the armed forces, but it does not give any specific definition of what this means. The Constitution also gives Congress specific powers related to the military, such as the power to declare war, the power to set rules for capture of the enemy, the power to discipline a military, and so on. What each of these powers mean are constitutional questions that are virtually always under some degree of debate or scrutiny: the Executive consistently maintains that it should have more power as commander in chief, and the Congress generally pushes back with its own claims on power.
Courts have often been reluctant to enter into the fray of these issues, often stating that disputes about how war powers are to be exercised are “political questions” that are not ripe or not appropriate for judicial review. There are exceptions, such as the time President Truman tried to nationalize the US steel industry in order to carry out the war effort in Korea, because Truman claimed that the commander in chief clause allowed him to do such things in times of war. The Supreme Court didn’t see it his way.
Nonetheless, it is generally accepted that the power of the presidency was been on an expansion trend throughout the 20th century, except when Nixon really screwed things up and damaged the prestige of the institution. After Nixon, Congress reasserted its claim on various powers and passed things like the War Powers Resolution, which is an attempt to limit a President’s claim to be able to start wars by relying on the Commander in Chief clause of the Constitution.
In addition to the constitutional question, there are a great number of powers that federal law gives to the President during times of emergency or war. This isn’t because of the Constitution, directly, but because Congress and the President have agreed to pass a law with such-and-such provision. For example, during times of national emergency, the president is allowed to mobilize up to one million members of the Reserves and the National Guard for up to two years of service. Generally speaking, in times of peace or non-emergency, law limits these types of mobilzations to about 200,000 reservists for 270 days.
There are too many powers in this general realm of “what the President is specifically allowed to do during war/national emergency” to list specifically, but I do have, on paper, a list that claims to be complete. If you have specific questions about specific powers, that may be helpful to know.
I wrote about presidential war powers for my college honors thesis, as it happens.
Another major factor in the growth of presidential power was the Cold War and the rise of the “national security state.” With the advent of nuclear weapons and the danger of a surprise attack which might actually destroy the country, the president gained the power to devastate the planet. You can’t call Congress into session to declare war when the missiles are already inbound. And, until Vietnam and Watergate, Congress was more inclined to defer to the president’s judgment on most foreign policy and military decisions.
Given their concerns about tyranny and absolute power (prescient, given the recent controversy about warrantless wiretapping), I suspect that the Framers would be appalled to see the president - any single individual - now holding such virtually untrammeled authority.
As to nuclear weapons, however, it’s hard to see how it could be otherwise.