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National War Powers Final Report

Panel calls for new war powers law

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11605.html

Excerpt:

The debate over the respective powers of Congress and the president to wage war arises from the way the Constitution divides authority between the legislative and executive branches.

The Constitution names the president as commander-in-chief but invests Congress with the power to declare war and control funding.

“The question of how our nation makes the decision to enter into war,” Baker said, is “an issue that has bedeviled legal experts and government officials since the Constitution was framed.”

Congress passed the War Powers Resolution of 1973 near the end of the Vietnam War. The law says the president can deploy troops only if authorized by Congress or in a national emergency and requires the president to give regular reports to Congress on all ongoing conflicts. But the law has not been regularly invoked, and the White House reports are “almost meaningless,” said Christopher.

“The biggest problem with the 1973 resolution is that most legal experts consider it to be unconstitutional,” Baker said, because it limits the president’s war powers too much.

“We think that the rule of law, which is of course the centerpiece of American democracy, is undermined and is damaged when the main statute in this vital policy area is regularly questioned or ignored.”

While many attempts have been made over the years to amend the 1973 law, they have failed because the legislation shifted too much power toward either the president or Congress, said commission member and former Democratic Rep.Lee H. Hamilton of Indiana.

“That is the reason we have decided not to try to resolve the Constitutional issue, but to come forward with a very practical solution,” he said, “that will be politically acceptable but that will make a big step forward on a critically important point.”