Can the President Declare War?

Can the President declare war? The War Powers Resolution (also known as the War Powers Resolution of 1973 or the War Powers Act) (50 U.S.C. 1541–1548) is a federal law intended to check the president’s power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress. The Resolution was adopted in the form of a United States Congressional joint resolution.

War powers: Congress Defecting From Its Responsibility?

We frequently hear that the president has the right to send men into battle on his own authority by virtue of Article II, Section 2, which deems the president the commander in chief of the armed forces of the United States. The Framers had a very specific idea in mind when they drafted and approved this provision of the Constitution, and it did not include the power to declare war, a power that is reserved to Congress. This is why Woodrow Wilson went to Congress for a declaration of war before plunging the United States into World War I. Even Franklin Roosevelt, after the surprise attack by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, went to Congress for a declaration of war, and did not simply send American troops into battle against the Japanese on his own authority. He knew perfectly well that the Constitution gave him no such authority.

Can the President Declare War: What a President Said

“The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our president where kings have always stood.” –Abraham Lincoln, 1848