Case ID: us_393/html/1002-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice Douglas,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

No. 613.
    McArthur et al. v. Clifford, Secretary of Defense, et al.
    
      Philip J. Hirschkop for petitioners.
    
      Solicitor General Griswold for respondents.
   C. A. 4th Cir. Motions to dispense with printing petition and to amend petition granted. Certiorari denied.

Mr. Justice Douglas,

dissenting.

I dissent from a denial of certiorari in this ease. An important unresolved constitutional issue of immediate importance to many Americans is involved. It is whether men may be sent abroad to fight in a war which has not been declared by Congress. This is a point on which I wrote rather elaborate dissents in Holmes v. United States, 391 U. S. 936, and Hart v. United States, 391 U. S. 956. This certainly is a substantial question and one which has never been resolved by this Court.

The question of the power of the President to conduct a war without a declaration of war was raised in the Prize Cases, 2 Black 635, during the Civil War. That was an internal insurrection which would perhaps be analogous here if the Vietnamese were invading the United States.

It was a five-to-four decision, upholding Presidential power. Would it have been the same if Lincoln had had an expeditionary force fighting a “war” overseas?

There should not be the slightest doubt that whenever the Chief Executive of the country takes any citizen by the neck and either puts him in prison or subjects him to some ordeal or sends him overseas to fight in a war, the question is a justiciable one. To call issues of that kind “political” would be to abdicate the judicial function which the Court honored in the midst of the Civil War in the Prize Cases.

The spectre of executive war-making is an ominous threat to our republican institutions. What can be done in Vietnam can be done in many areas of this troubled world without debate or responsible public decision.

I would put the case down for argument and resolve this important constitutional problem.