Military, War, and Peace Commons^™

War Powers Reform: A Skeptical View, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

Debates about war powers focus too much on legal checks and on the President’s power to start wars. Congressional checks before and during crises work better than many reform-ists suppose, and there are ways to improve Congress’s political checking without substantial legal reform.

Delegating War Powers, Michael D. Ramsey, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

Academic scholarship and political commentary endlessly debate the President’s independent constitutional power to start wars. And yet, every major U.S. war in the last sixty years was fought pursuant to war-initiation power that Congress gave to the President in the form of authorizations for the use of military force. As a practical matter, the central constitutional question of modern war initiation is not the President’s independent war power; it is Congress’s ability to delegate its war power to the President.

It was not until quite late in American history that the practice of war power delegation became well accepted as …

Russia, Ukraine, And The Future World Order, Ingrid (Wuerth) Brunk, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

Russia's invasion of Ukraine, initiated on February 24, 2022, is among the most — if not the most — significant shocks to the global order since World War II. This piece assesses the stakes of the invasion for the core principles that lie at the heart of contemporary international law and the world order that it has helped to create. We argue, relying in part on the other contributions to the October 2022 agora on Ukraine in the American Journal of International Law, that however this war ends, it will reshape, in ways large and small, the world we …

Constitutional War Powers In World War I: Charles Evans Hughes And The Power To Wage War Successfully, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

On September 5, 1917, at the height of American participation in the Great War, Charles Evans Hughes famously argued that “the power to wage war is the power to wage war successfully.” This moment and those words were a collision between the onset of “total war,” Lochner-era jurisprudence, and cautious Progressive-era administrative development. This article tells the story of Hughes’s statement – including what he meant at the time and how he wrestled with some difficult questions that flowed from it. The article then concludes with some reasons why the story remains important today.

In Defense Of Empiricism In Family Law, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

It is fitting to include an essay defending the application of empirical research to family law and policy in a symposium honoring the scholarly career of Peg Brinig, who is probably the leading empiricist working in family law. While such a defense might seem unnecessary, given the expanding role of behavioral, social, and biological research in shaping the regulation of children and families, prominent scholars recently have raised concerns about the trend toward reliance on empirical science in this field. A part of the criticism is directed at the quality of the science itself and at the lack of sophistication …

Cyberattacks And The Constitution, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

Contrary to popular view, cyberattacks alone are rarely exercises of constitutional war powers – and they might never be. They are often instead best understood as exercises of other powers pertaining to nonwar military, foreign affairs, intelligence, and foreign commerce, for example. Although this more fine-grained, fact-specific conception of cyberattacks leaves room for broad executive leeway in some contexts, it also contains a strong constitutional basis for legislative regulation of cyber operations.

Presidential Use Of Force In East Asia: American Constitutional Law And The U.S.-Japan Alliance, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Constitution’s allocation of military authority has adapted over time to major shifts in American power and grand strategy. This paper explains, with a focus on U.S. military actions in East Asia and possible scenarios of special joint concern to the United States and Japan, that the president in practice wields tremendous power and discretion in using military force. Although formal, legal checks on the president’s use of force rarely come into play, Congress nevertheless retains some political power to influence presidential decision-making. The president’s powers are also constrained by interagency processes within the executive branch, and alliance relations …

Contre-/Counter-, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Examines the “counter-” move in Balibar’s thought, analysing it not in the Kantian or Hegelian sense of a synthesis that resolves an antinomic opposition (not the least of which, because the particle “contre-” functions differently than the particle “anti-”), but rather as an original counterpoint that itself becomes so powerful as to liberate itself from the oppositional relationship and transform itself into a free-standing concept, intervention, or even mode of governmentality. It is not an opposition that leads to a synthesis, but instead to a stage of “perfection” that (1) merely indexes its former counter-partner, and (2) becomes a fully …

War Powers: Congress, The President, And The Courts – A Model Casebook Section, Stephen M. Griffin, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

This model casebook section is concerned with the constitutional law of war powers as developed by the executive and legislative branches, with a limited look at relevant statutes and federal court cases. It is intended for use in Constitutional Law I classes that cover separation of powers. It could also be used for courses in National Security Law or Foreign Relations Law, or for graduate courses in U.S. foreign policy. This is designed to be the reading for one to two classes, and it can supplement or replace standard casebook sections on war powers that are shorter and offer less …

Strengthening The U.S.-Japan Alliance: Pathways For Bridging Law And Policy, Columbia Law School, 2020, Nobuhisa Ishizuka, Masahiro Kurosaki, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

During the three years leading up to this year ’s 60th anniversary of the signing of the 1960 U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, a series of workshops were held under the joint sponsorship of Columbia Law School’s Center for Japanese Legal Studies and the National Defense Academy of Japan’s Center for Global Security. Bringing together experts in international law and political science primarily from the United States and Japan, the workshops examined how differing approaches to use of force and understandings of individual and collective self-defense in the two countries might adversely affect their alliance.

The workshop participants explored the underlying causes …

Cold War I, Post-Cold War, And Cold War Ii: The Overarching Contexts For Peacekeeping, Human Rights, And Nato, Michael W. Doyle

Faculty Scholarship

Peacekeeping, human rights, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have flourished in complementary contrast with each other. Their relationship has reflected the constraints and opportunities provided by three geopolitical eras since World War II. The first (the first Cold War) began in about 1948 and lasted until 1988; the second (the Post-Cold War Liberal Primacy) ran from 1989 to around 2012; finally, since 2012 the world has been threatened with the emergence of a second Cold War.

During the first geopolitical era, NATO was the centerpiece of the Western Cold War alliance. However, its importance declined when the Cold …

New Look Constitutionalism: The Cold War Critique Of Military Manpower Administration, Jeremy K. Kessler

Faculty Scholarship

By reconstructing the anxious, constitutional dialogue that shaped the administration of military manpower under President Eisenhower’s New Look, this Article explores the role that administrative constitutionalism played in the development of the American national-security state, a state that became both more powerful and more legalistic during the pivotal years of the Cold War. The Article also questions the frequent identification of administrative constitutionalism with the relative autonomy and opacity of the federal bureaucracy. The back-and-forth of administrative constitutionalism continually recalibrated the degree of autonomy and opacity that characterized the draft apparatus. This evidence suggests that bureaucratic autonomy and opacity may …

Beyond The Counterinsurgency Paradigm Of Governing: Letting Go Of Prediction And The Illusion Of An Internal Enemy, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Bernard E. Harcourt expands the thesis about the illusion of insurgency in the United States to the current day. What, he asks, could alter fraudulent and overblown perceptions about the sanctity and importance of the national security state? He suggests that the way forward might begin with relinquishing the institutionalized practice of predicting danger. How to do this and what the consequences might be for his three-pronged analysis of state counterinsurgency strategy provides fresh thinking for future analysis and policymaking.

Is Korematsu Good Law?, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

In Trump v. Hawaii, the Supreme Court claimed to overrule its infamous Korematsu decision. This Essay argues that this claim is both empty and grotesque. It is empty because a decision to overrule a prior case is not meaningful unless it specifies which propositions the Court is disavowing. Korematsu stands for many propositions, not all of which are agreed upon, but the Hawaii Court underspecifies what it meant to overrule. The Court’s claim of overruling Korematsu is grotesque because its emptiness means to conceal its disturbing affinity with that case.

What's So Great About The Declare War Clause?, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

I have long believed two things about constitutional war powers, which my reading of Noah Feldman’s “The Three Lives of James Madison” largely confirmed. First, James Madison was brilliant and prescient about many things, but the strategy and politics of war were not among them. Second, modern constitutional critics of an imperial presidency place too much weight on the declare war clause – and especially Madison’s statements about it. Madison, indeed, worried deeply about unchecked presidential war powers. But Feldman’s book shows that Madison did not emphasize the same risks and checks so often ascribed to him today, especially by …

Presidents And War Powers, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Constitution vests the president with “executive power” and provides that “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy,” while it endows Congress with the power “To declare War.” These provisions have given rise to two major questions about presidential war powers: first, what should be the president’s role in taking the country to war, and, second, what are the president’s powers to direct its conduct. Historian Michael Beschloss’s new book, “Presidents of War,” examines how presidents have responded to each of these questions across two hundred years of U.S. history.

The major argument of …

The Theory And Practice At The Intersection Between Human Rights And Humanitarian Law, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

The United States is more than fifteen years into a fight against terrorism that shows no sign of abating and, with the change in administration, appears to be intensifying. Other Western democracies that have historically been uneasy about U.S. counterterrorism policies have, in recent years, shifted toward those policies. And armed nonstate groups continue to commit large-scale acts of violence in multiple distinct theaters. The legal issues that these situations present are not entirely new, but neither are they going away. Recent publications, like the three works under review, thus provide useful opportunities to reflect on and refine our thinking …

Cyber Strategy & Policy: International Law Dimensions, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

Important international law questions for formulating cyber strategy and policy include whether and when a cyber-attack amounts to an “act of war,” or, more precisely, an “armed attack” triggering a right of self-defense, and how the international legal principle of “sovereignty” could apply to cyber activities. International law in this area is not settled. There is, however, ample room within existing international law to support a strong cyber strategy, including a powerful deterrent. The answers to many international law questions discussed below depend on specific, case-by-case facts, and are likely to be highly contested for a long time to come. …

Introduction To Symposium On Unauthorized Military Interventions For The Public Good, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

On April 6, 2017, the United States launched fifty-nine Tomahawk missiles against an air base in Syria, after evidence surfaced that Bashar Al-Assad’s regime had again used chemical weapons against its people. President Trump announced that the strikes were intended “to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons.” But as of this Symposium’s publication, the United States has not articulated a formal legal justification for the strikes. Instead, it reportedly circulated a document that listed several case-specific considerations that, in its view, justified the use of force. Yet the global reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Many states …

The Power To Wage War Successfully, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

A century ago and in the midst of American involvement in World War I, future Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes delivered one of the most influential lectures on the Constitution in wartime. In it he uttered his famous axiom that “the power to wage war is the power to wage war successfully.” That statement continues to echo in modern jurisprudence, though the background and details of the lecture have not previously been explored in detail. Drawing on Hughes’s own research notes, this Article examines his 1917 formulation and shows how Hughes presciently applied it to the most pressing war powers …

Autonomous Weapons Systems And Transparency: Towards An International Dialogue, Sarah Knuckey

Faculty Scholarship

The international debate around autonomous weapons systems (AWS) has addressed the potential ethical, legal and strategic implications of advancing autonomy, and analysis has offered myriad potential concerns and conceivable benefits. Many consider autonomy in selecting and engaging targets to be potentially revolutionary, yet AWS developments are nascent, and the debates are, in many respects and necessarily, heavily circumscribed by the uncertainty of future developments. In particular, legal assessments as to whether AWS might be used in compliance with the conduct of hostilities rules in international humanitarian law (IHL) are at present largely predicated upon a forecast of future facts, including …

A Response To Professor Rascoff's Presidential Intelligence, Philip C. Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Samuel Rascoff’s Presidential Intelligence reflects both the conceptual and research strengths of the author, which are formidable, and the practical difficulties of intelligence reform, which are no less so. Rascoff is certainly right that to be effective – in the still-unfolding constitutional environment that must contend with terror groups armed with unprecedented weapons and communications technology – the intelligence community (IC) must act within the law and the rules governing that community must be reformed to make this possible. He is inclined to believe that the answer lies in heightened presidential management. I’m not so sure. The actual presidential …

A War For Liberty: On The Law Of Conscientious Objection, Jeremy K. Kessler

Faculty Scholarship

One common understanding of the Second World War is that it was a contest between liberty and tyranny. For many at the time – and for still more today – ‘liberty’ meant the rule of law: government constrained by principle, procedure, and most of all, individual rights. For those states that claimed to represent this rule-of-law tradition, total war presented enormous challenges, even outright contradictions. How would these states manage to square the governmental imperatives of military emergency with the legal protections and procedures essential to preserving the ancient ‘liberty of the subject’? This question could be and was asked …

Defensive Force Against Non-State Actors: The State Of Play, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

On September 22, 2014, a U.S.-led coalition began airstrikes against the so-called Islamic State in Syria. At the same time, the United States started targeting the Khorasan group in Syria. These two operations raise (again) the question of when States may use defensive force against non-State actors in other States. The text of the United Nations Charter does not resolve the question. Article 2(4) prohibits States from using force “against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” Article 51 then recognizes “the inherent right to …

The New Stock Market: Sense And Nonsense, Merritt B. Fox, Lawrence R. Glosten, Gabriel Rauterberg

Faculty Scholarship

How stocks are traded in the United States has been totally transformed. Gone are the dealers on NASDAQ and the specialists at the NYSE. Instead, a company’s stock can now be traded on up to sixty competing venues where a computer matches incoming orders. High-frequency traders (HFTs) post the majority of quotes and are the preponderant source of liquidity in the new market.

Many practices associated with the new stock market are highly controversial, as illustrated by the public furor following the publication of Michael Lewis’s book Flash Boys. Critics say that HFTs use their speed in discovering changes in …

Defining And Punishing Offenses Under Treaties, Sarah H. Cleveland, William S. Dodge

Faculty Scholarship

One of the principal aims of the U.S. Constitution was to give the federal government authority to comply with its international legal commitments. The scope of Congress's constitutional authority to implement treaties has recently received particular attention. In Bond v. United States, the Court avoided the constitutional questions by construing a statute to respect federalism, but these questions are unlikely to go away. This Article contributes to the ongoing debate by identifying the Offenses Clause as an additional source of Congress's constitutional authority to implement certain treaty commitments. Past scholarship has assumed that the Article I power to "define …

Unfriendly Unilateralism, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines a category of conduct that I call “unfriendly unilateralism.” One state deprives another of a benefit (unfriendly) and, in some cases, strays from its own obligations (noncompliant), outside any structured international process (unilateral). Such conduct troubles many international lawyers because it looks more like the nastiness of power politics than like the order and stability of law. Worse, states can abuse the conduct to undercut the law. Nevertheless, international law tolerates unfriendly unilateralism for enforcement. A victim state may use unfriendly unilateralism against a scofflaw in order to restore the legal arrangement that existed before the breach. …

The Power To Threaten War, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

Existing war powers scholarship focuses overwhelmingly on the President's power to initiate military operations abroad and the extent to which that power is constrained by Congress. It ignores the allocation of legal power to threaten military force or war, even though threats – to coerce or deter enemies and to reassure allies – are one of the most important ways in which the United States government wields its military might. This paper fills that scholarly void, and draws on recent political science and historical scholarship to construct a richer and more accurate account of the modern presidency's powers to shape …

The Long-Term International Law Implications Of Targeted Killings Practices, Christof Heyns, Sarah Knuckey

Faculty Scholarship

One of the most crucial and enduring questions about “targeted killings” is: How will the currently expanding practices of singling out individuals in advance and eliminating them in other countries without accountability impact the established international legal system?

International law, since at least World War II, has developed various mechanisms to limit killing in general, including targeted killings. These take the form of vigorous protections for the right to life under human rights law; safeguards against the interstate use of force while permitting states to protect themselves where necessary; and aiming to strike a balance between the principles of humanity …

The Invention Of A Human Right: Conscientious Objection At The United Nations, 1947-2011, Jeremy Kessler

Faculty Scholarship

The right of conscientious objection to military service is the most startling of human rights. While human rights generally seek to protect individuals from state power, the right of conscientious objection radically alters the citizen-state relationship, subordinating a state's decisions about national security to the beliefs of the individual citizen. In a world of nation-states jealous of their sovereignty, how did the human right of conscientious objection become an international legal doctrine? By answering that question, this Article both clarifies the legal pedigree of the human right of conscientious objection and sheds new light on the relationship between international human …