Source: https://history.house.gov/Institution/Origins-Development/War-Powers/
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 16:24:53+00:00

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Like many powers articulated in the U.S. Constitution, Congress’ authority to declare war was revolutionary in its design, and a clear break from the past when a handful of European monarchs controlled the continent’s affairs.
By August, the framers had yet to decide where to vest the country’s war powers. Pierce Butler of South Carolina favored the Executive office as best suited to make war. But there was a growing sense that such monumental responsibility belonged with the legislative branch. Not everyone was convinced that the House and Senate should share the power, however, and Pinkney felt that since the Senate already had jurisdiction over treaties, it alone should have discretion to decide war matters as well.
Madison and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts sought a middle ground. For Gerry, giving a single office the entirety of the country’s war powers contradicted the goals of a republic, and he and Madison proposed a quick edit, replacing “make” with “declare” so that the Constitution would read “Congress shall have power to declare war.” The change codified congressional authority but made the clause flexible enough to enable the President to defend the country during emergencies. The delegates worried that Congress would be out of session or would act too slowly if foreign forces invaded America. So, despite their resolve to dilute Executive power, they gave the office an implied authority to “make war” as an insurance policy of sorts for America’s security.
Like George Mason of Virginia, the founders felt that war should be difficult to enter, and they expected congressional debate to restrain the war-making process.
For most of U.S. history, the Constitution’s checks and balances worked, and more often than not Presidents sought the consent of Congress on war matters. The period following World War II, however, saw the President’s war-making discretion reach a level that made many legislators nervous. By the early 1970s, the relationship between the legislative and executive branches reached something of a tipping point.
About this object This gavel was used during the December 11, 1941, session in which the House approved the declarations of war against Germany and Italy. Gavels used in historically significant sessions were occasionally presented as memorabilia.
The decision to send the nation to war is perhaps Congress’s gravest responsibility, and in the House war votes can be solemn, weighty occasions. For the Members, to declare war against a foreign power is to send their constituents, their neighbors, their family, and even themselves into harm’s way.
One day after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in early December 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt addressed a Joint Session of Congress, laying out his cause for war. When the House gathered immediately afterward to discuss Roosevelt’s request, Jeannette Rankin of Montana repeatedly sought recognition to address the chamber. Twenty-four years earlier, Rankin had voted against America’s entry into World War I, and on the eve of World War II, even as the war resolution against Japan went through its first reading, Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas, who witnessed Rankin’s previous vote in 1917, refused to recognize her. As Members prepared for the final vote, many approached Rankin hoping to convince her to vote for the war; at the very least they hoped she would vote present, or abstain all together. When the reading clerk reached her name during the roll call on the resolution’s final passage, Rankin voted no, the only vote against. The bill passed 388–1. “As a woman I can’t go to war,” she said, “and I refuse to send anyone else.” After the chamber erupted in protest to her vote, Rankin waited in a phone booth before the Capitol Police escorted her back to her office.
With one exception early on, votes to declare war in the House tended to pass with overwhelming majorities. Declaring war or passing an AUMF, however, is only the first step. Once the fighting begins, Congress assumes another constitutional role: that of oversight.
Bradley, Curtis A. and Jack L. Goldsmith, “Congressional Authorization and the War on Terrorism.” Harvard Law Review 118 no. 7 (2005): 2047–2133.
Burgess, Susan R. “War Powers.” In The Encyclopedia of the United States Congress, edited by Donald C. Bacon, et al., vol. 4, pages 2097–2100. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Cannon’s Precedents of the House of Representatives of the United States. Volume 7, §1894. GPO: Washington, D.C., 1935.
Deschler’s Precedents of the House of Representatives of the United States. Volume 3, Chapter 13, §3–11. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1976–1977.
Elsea, Jennifer K. and Matthew C. Weed. “Declarations of War and Authorizations for the Use of Military Force: Historical Background and Legal Implications.” Congressional Research Service, 18 April 2014, RL31133.
Fisher, Louis. President and Congress: Power and Policy. The Free Press: New York, 1972.
_____. Presidential War Power. Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 1995.
_____. Constitutional Conflicts between Congress and the President. 4th edition. Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 1997.
_____.	Congressional Abdication on War and Spending. College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 2000.
_____. “Clinton’s Military Action: No Rivals in Sight.” In Rivals for Power: Presidential-Congressional Relations, edited by James A. Thurber, pages 229–254. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Fowler, Linda L. “Congressional War Powers.” In The Oxford Handbook of the American Congress, edited by Eric Schickler and Frances E. Lee, pages 812–833. Oxford University Press, 2011.
Hinds’ Precedents of the House of Representatives of the United States. Vol. IV, §4164. GPO: Washington, D.C., 1907.
Howell, William G. and Jon C. Pevenhouse. While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War Powers. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
Katzmann, Robert A. “War Powers Resolution.” In The Encyclopedia of the United States Congress, vol.. 4, edited by Donald C. Bacon, et al., pages 2100–2102. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Kriner, Douglas L. After the Rubicon: Congress, Presidents, and the Politics of Waging War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Torreon, Barbara Salazar. “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2015.” Congressional Research Service, 15 January 2015. R42738.
Zeisberg, Mariah. War Powers: The Politics of Constitutional Authority. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.
1Louis Fisher, Presidential War Power (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995): 1–4.
2Abraham Lincoln to William H. Herndon, 15 Feb. 1848, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 1, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln1/1:458.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext (accessed 28 May 2015).
3Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911, 1966): 18–23.
4Farrand, ed., Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 1: 64–66, 70.
5Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911, 1966): 318–319; Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787–1788 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010): 43; Jack N. Rakove, Original Meaning: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997): 263.
6James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, 2 April 1798, in The Founders’ Constitution, vol. 3, Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner, eds. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1987): 96. See also, Fisher, Presidential War Power: 6.
7Fisher, Presidential War Power: 10–11; Fisher, Constitutional Conflicts Between Congress and the President, 4th ed. (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1997): 256–295.
8Linda L. Fowler, “Congressional War Powers,” in The Oxford Handbook of the American Congress, ed. Eric Schickler and Frances E. Lee (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011): 813; Fisher, Presidential War Power: 11–13. For a look at how this process, especially secretive operations by the President, have played out during the nuclear age, see Garry Wills, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State (New York: Penguin Press, 2010): 148–160.
9Fowler, “Congressional War Powers”: 815–816. “With neither statutory authority nor a declaration of war, Presidents have used force abroad on many occasions, ostensibly to protect life and property. They have justified their actions on the basis of executive responsibilities they find inherent in the Constitution.” See Fisher, Constitutional Conflicts between Congress and the President: 263–264, 266 (quote).
10Mariah Zeisberg, War Powers: The Politics of Constitutional Authority (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013): 5–6. Louis Fisher has also written that “the President acquired the responsibility to protect American life and property abroad. He has invoked that vague prerogative on numerous occasions to satisfy much larger objectives of the executive branch.” See Louis Fisher, President and Congress: Power and Policy (New York: The Free Press, 1972): 175.
11Linda L. Fowler, “Congressional War Powers”: 815.
12Deschler’s Precedents of the House of Representatives of the United States, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1977): Ch. 13 §5; Garry Wills, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State (New York: Penguin Press, 2010): 105–119.
13Linda L. Fowler, “Congressional War Powers”: 816; Fisher, Constitutional Conflicts between Congress and the President: 256, 274–277; “War Powers,” Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/law/help/war-powers.php (accessed 1 June 2015); Robert Katzmann, “War Powers Resolution,” in The Encyclopedia of the United States Congress, vol. 4, ed. Donald C. Bacon, et al. (New York Simon & Schuster, 1995): 2100–2102; William G. Howell and Jon C. Pevenhouse, While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War Powers (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007): 4. On U.S. involvement in Korea and the precedent it set regarding undeclared war, see Larry Blomstedt, Truman, Congress and Korea: The Politics of America’s First Undeclared War (Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 2016). On the failure of the War Powers Resolution, see also Louis Fisher, “Clinton’s Military Actions: No Rivals in Sight,” in Rivals for Power: Presidential-Congressional Relations, ed. James A. Thurber (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002): 229. On the reaction by the White House since the War Powers Resolution, see Wills, Bomb Power: 184–196.
14Jennifer K. Elsea and Matthew C. Weed, “Declarations of War and Authorizations for the Use of Military Force: Historical Background and Legal Implications,” Congressional Research Service, 18 April 2014, RL31133: 4.
15Elsea and Weed, “Declarations of War and Authorizations for the Use of Military Force: Historical Background and Legal Implications”: 1.
16Elsea and Weed, “Declarations of War and Authorizations for the Use of Military Force: Historical Background and Legal Implications”: 5; Deschler’s Precedents of the House of Representatives of the United States, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1977): chapter 13, §8; Curtis A. Bradley and Jack L. Goldsmith, “Congressional Authorization and the War on Terrorism,” Harvard Law Review 118 no. 7 (2005): 2073–2074. For more information on the use of military force abroad following World War II, see Barry M. Blechman and Stephen S. Kaplan, Force without War: U.S. Armed Forces as a Political Instrument (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1978).
18Bradley and Goldsmith, “Congressional Authorization and the War on Terrorism”: quote 2060, on the change to broad authorizations, see 2075–2076, 2078.
19The earliest mention in a congressional source appears to occur in Senate debate in 1982. See Congressional Record, Senate, 97th Cong., 2nd sess. (14 April 1982): 6808. The short title for empowering the President to fight in Iraq in 1991 was “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution.” See H.J. Res. 77, P.L. 102–1. The earliest mention of “authorization for use of military force” in our ProQuest newspaper database comes from November 15, 1990, in an article in the Austin American Statesman about the Gulf War. It shows up again in the New York Times a few months later. See, “Bush Tries to Ease Congress’ War Fears,” 15 November 1990, Austin American Statesman: A1; Adam Clymer, “Confrontation in the Gulf,” 11 January 1991, New York Times: A1.
20Hinds’ Precedents of the House of Representatives of the United States, vol. 4 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1907): §4164; Deschler’s Precedents of the House of Representatives of the United States, vol. 3: Ch. 13 §5; on Military Affairs, see Cannon’s Precedents of the House of Representatives of the United States, vol. VII (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1935): §1894. For an example from the 19th century, see J.C.A. Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983).
21Deschler’s Precedents of the House of Representatives of the United States, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1977): chapter 13, §5, p. 1793.
22House votes from Elsea and Weed, “Declarations of War and Authorizations for the Use of Military Force: Historical Background and Legal Implications”: 4.

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