As a result of my earlier post on teaching "
Law and the 'War on Terror,'" I learned about
Long Wars and the Constitution (Harvard University Press), a new book by
Stephen M. Griffin (Tulane Law School). Here's a description from the
Press:
In a wide-ranging constitutional history of presidential war decisions from 1945 to the present,
Stephen M. Griffin
rethinks the long-running debate over the “imperial presidency” and
concludes that the eighteenth-century Constitution is inadequate to the
challenges of a post-9/11 world.
The Constitution requires the consent of Congress before the United
States can go to war. Truman’s decision to fight in Korea without
gaining that consent was unconstitutional, says Griffin, but the
acquiescence of Congress and the American people created a precedent for
presidents to claim autonomy in this arena ever since. The unthinking
extension of presidential leadership in foreign affairs to a point where
presidents unilaterally decide when to go to war, Griffin argues, has
destabilized our constitutional order and deranged our foreign policy. Long Wars and the Constitution
demonstrates the unexpected connections between presidential war power
and the constitutional crises that have plagued American politics.
Contemporary presidents are caught in a dilemma. On the one hand are
the responsibilities handed over to them by a dangerous world, and on
the other is an incapacity for sound decisionmaking in the absence of
interbranch deliberation. President Obama’s continuation of many Bush
administration policies in the long war against terrorism is only the
latest in a chain of difficulties resulting from the imbalances
introduced by the post-1945 constitutional order. Griffin argues for
beginning a cycle of accountability in which Congress would play a
meaningful role in decisions for war, while recognizing the realities of
twenty-first century diplomacy.
The
TOC:
Introduction
1. War Powers and Constitutional Change
2. Truman and the Post-1945 Constitutional Order
3. War and the National Security State
4. Vietnam and Watergate: The Post-1945 Constitutional Order in Crisis
5. The Constitutional Order in the Post-Vietnam Era
6. The 9/11 Wars and the Presidency
7. A New Constitutional Order?
Appendix: Executive Branch War Powers Opinions since 1950
And one of several impressive blurbs:
“Stephen Griffin weaves legal,
historical, and political analysis together to cast the constitutional
order from 1945 to the present in a new and deeply informative light.
His discussion of why Presidents have come to dominate war-making, and
how that produces recurrent constitutional crises, is a major
contribution to understanding how the Constitution works today.”—Mark Tushnet, author of Why the Constitution Matters
For a fuller description of the book, in Griffin's own words, check out this recent Balkinization
post.
