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Article Excerpt
In an op-ed piece published in the New York Times on July 8, 2008, former secretaries of state James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher summarize the findings and recommendations of the National War Powers Commission. The article begins on this note: "The most agonizing decision we make as a nation is whether to go to war." Quite true. The next sentence, however, offers a serious misconception: "Our Constitution ambiguously divides war powers between the president (who is the commander in chief) and Congress (which has the power of the purse and the power to declare war)."
In a column about the commission's proposal, David Broder (2008) of the Washington Post repeats the theme about constitutional ambiguity: "The Founders left a ton of confusion about a pretty important question: Who has the authority to make war? Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive right to declare war, but Article II makes the president the commander in chief." An editorial in The Hill (2008) newspaper parroted the commission's reference to the "ambiguity" of war powers.
These formulations--president as commander in chief and Congress as the war-declaring branch--are shallow. Referring to the title "commander in chief" does not explain what powers go with it. The powers do not include starting wars. Identifying only the war-declaring clause of Congress ignores seven other clauses in the U.S. Constitution that vest in the legislative branch military and national security powers (raise and support armies, make rules for the military, grant letters of marque and reprisal, call forth the militia, provide for organizing, arming, discipline the militia, etc.)
For 160 years, there was no ambiguity. Until President Harry S. Truman went to war on his own in 1950 against North Korea, no one recognized a conflict or tension between the war-declaring power of Congress and the commander-in-chief responsibilities of the president. No one argued that the president could initiate war. The president was only commander in chief after Congress declared or authorized war. He had certain limited defensive powers ("to repel sudden attacks"). There was nothing ambiguous about the constitutional requirement that Congress is the branch of government authorized to decide to take the country from a state of peace to a state of war. That constitutional principle was bedrock to the framers. They broke cleanly and crisply with the British model of William Blackstone that allowed kings to control everything external to the country, including going to war (Fisher 2004, 1-8). The framers created a Constitution dedicated to popular control through elected representatives. Citizens (not "subjects" under a monarch) empowered lawmakers to decide when to go to war.
In Federalist No. 4, John Jay reviewed what executive leaders had done over the centuries in taking their countries to war. They acted not for the national interest, he said, but for personal motives alone. Executives "will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting any thing by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for purposes and objects merely personal, such as a thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans." Their military adventures repeatedly proved calamitous for the common people, in fortunes squandered and lives lost. Executive leaders engaged in wars "not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of [their] people" (The Federalist 2002, 101). An appendix in the commission's report acknowledges that "only one Framer or Ratifier at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, Pierce Butler of South Carolina, proposed that the power to commence wars should be vested in the President alone" (National War Powers Commission 2008, Appendix 4, 3). Aware of this evidence, the commission still found the picture "ambiguous."
Dahlia Lithwick (2008), writing for Newsweek, reviewed the proposal from the war powers commission and found that it "all but disregards the Framers' concern that Congress be given the ultimate authority over matters of war and peace." She quoted from James Madison, who wrote to Thomas Jefferson that the Constitution "supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature."
The Commission's Approach
Instead of independently analyzing the constitutional text and the legal principles at stake with the war power, the Baker-Christopher Commission decided to summarize conflicting positions: advocates of congressional power versus advocates of presidential power. Faced with disagreement among scholars, the commission concluded that the Constitution must be ambiguous. This approach amounts to "constitutional avoidance." Adopting that attitude empties the Constitution of meaning. Core principles simply disappear, including popular government. Other than provisions that are patently clear (the president must be at least 35 years old, Congress consists of two chambers, etc.), the Constitution invites extended debate on most issues, including federalism, free speech, religious liberty, and the rights of the accused. Disagreement on those and other issues does not mean that we abandon hope of understanding and preserving constitutional principles.
Consider free speech. Many consider it a fundamental value essential for civic discourse, democratic debate, free government, and individual growth. To Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo, the freedom of thought and speech forms "the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom." (1) In the words of Justice Louis D. Brandeis, free speech exists to "make men free to develop their faculties." (2) A rival school can point to the Sedition Acts of 1798, 1917-18, and 1940, which provided prison terms for anyone who criticized the government. Over the years, many scholars and judges have argued that free speech must be restricted in times of war. Because of those conflicting positions, would we say that the principle of free speech is too ambiguous to merit protection, that disagreement about its scope or value prevents us from understanding which position...
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