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War Powers: The Politics of Constitutional Authority
Armed interventions in Libya, Haiti, Iraq, Vietnam, and Korea challenged the US president and Congress with a core question of constitutional interpretation: does the president, or Congress, have constitutional authority to take the country to war? "War Powers" argues that the Constitution doesn't offer a single legal answer to that question. But its structure and values indicate a vision of a well-functioning constitutional politics, one that enables the branches of government themselves to generate good answers to this question for the circumstances of their own times.
Mariah Zeisberg shows that what matters is not that the branches enact the same constitutional settlement for all conditions, but instead how well they bring their distinctive governing capacities to bear on their interpretive work in context. Because the branches legitimately approach constitutional questions in different ways, interpretive conflicts between them can sometimes indicate a successful rather than deficient interpretive politics. Zeisberg argues for a set of distinctive constitutional standards for evaluating the branches and their relationship to one another, and she demonstrates how observers and officials can use those standards to evaluate the branches' constitutional politics. With cases ranging from the Mexican War and World War II to the Cold War, Cuban Missile Crisis, and Iran-Contra scandal, "War Powers" reinterprets central controversies of war powers scholarship and advances a new way of evaluating the constitutional behavior of officials outside of the judiciary.
Mariah Zeisberg shows that what matters is not that the branches enact the same constitutional settlement for all conditions, but instead how well they bring their distinctive governing capacities to bear on their interpretive work in context. Because the branches legitimately approach constitutional questions in different ways, interpretive conflicts between them can sometimes indicate a successful rather than deficient interpretive politics. Zeisberg argues for a set of distinctive constitutional standards for evaluating the branches and their relationship to one another, and she demonstrates how observers and officials can use those standards to evaluate the branches' constitutional politics. With cases ranging from the Mexican War and World War II to the Cold War, Cuban Missile Crisis, and Iran-Contra scandal, "War Powers" reinterprets central controversies of war powers scholarship and advances a new way of evaluating the constitutional behavior of officials outside of the judiciary.
- GenresPolitics
288 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 2, 2022
I think that the book is useful as a place to find new sources and viewpoints as it is well researched, and I also think it offers some useful techniques for evaluating how closely the different branches work together in using war powers.
In my opinion the arguments used were not clearly articulated - perhaps because the logic behind them is convoluted. The author suggests a “relational” framework that assesses an actors adherence to the Constitution by evaluating how well the legislative and executive branches work together. While I think the context gained from such a process is useful when considering how well political leaders acted, using such a subjective method to consider constitutionality seems to remove any limits on actions that the more powerful branch decides to take.
In my opinion the arguments used were not clearly articulated - perhaps because the logic behind them is convoluted. The author suggests a “relational” framework that assesses an actors adherence to the Constitution by evaluating how well the legislative and executive branches work together. While I think the context gained from such a process is useful when considering how well political leaders acted, using such a subjective method to consider constitutionality seems to remove any limits on actions that the more powerful branch decides to take.
Displaying 1 of 1 review