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**adultcheee** · 08-29-2012, 11:32 PM

Dismayed and yet, not surprised in the least. The constitution has been violated to some degree in one fashion or another almost since its inception.

Apparently so.

I view it this way: The Constitution does not expressly prohibit the President from using the military in the absence of a declaration of war. Such use -- as, for example, in the Barbary Wars -- by Jefferson and Madison indicate that neither the author nor his contemporaries interpreted it to impliedly contain such a prohibition either. Instead, it has always been assumed that the President had authority to act militarily without a declaration of war, and this assumption is carried forward and codified in a sense in the War Powers Resolution, which takes the President's authority to act first as a given.

There seldom is much dispute about it, but as I indicated earlier: I believe the courts would leave resolution of such an issue to the executive and legislative branches based on the political question doctrine.

08-29-2012, 11:32 PM	#28
adultcheee Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 517 Senior Member	Dismayed and yet, not surprised in the least. The constitution has been violated to some degree in one fashion or another almost since its inception. Apparently so. I view it this way: The Constitution does not expressly prohibit the President from using the military in the absence of a declaration of war. Such use -- as, for example, in the Barbary Wars -- by Jefferson and Madison indicate that neither the author nor his contemporaries interpreted it to impliedly contain such a prohibition either. Instead, it has always been assumed that the President had authority to act militarily without a declaration of war, and this assumption is carried forward and codified in a sense in the War Powers Resolution, which takes the President's authority to act first as a given. There seldom is much dispute about it, but as I indicated earlier: I believe the courts would leave resolution of such an issue to the executive and legislative branches based on the political question doctrine.
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