The Institute for Constitutional History is pleased to announce another
Robert H. Smith seminar for advanced graduate students and junior faculty!
*Modern Constitutional War Powers*
Program Content:
The six-week seminar concerns the evolution of the distribution of war
powers from the beginning of the Twentieth Century to the present day. The
Founders endeavored to create a federal system in which a separation and
blending of powers would make the legislature the preeminent source of
military authority and thus prevent the executive from unilaterally
entangling the nation in costly belligerent adventures. Conventional
wisdom has it that practical developments over the past 100 years—most
significantly, the creation of a powerful standing army and intelligence
establishment, the development of nuclear weapons, and the emergence of a
much more robust role for the United States as a superpower responsible for
the defense of Europe and other allies in a post-nuclear age—have rendered
the original constitutional design obsolete, such that Congress and the
courts have largely ceded war-making authority to an all-powerful,
virtually unchecked President. In this interdisciplinary course, using
conventional legal materials as well as recent historical and political
science accounts of the distribution of war powers, we will examine whether
and to what extent this conventional account is accurate, and will more
broadly discuss whether the current balance of powers ensures sufficient
checks on misguided adventurism and abuse of individual liberties. Continue reading