Law Commons^™

Presidential War-Making, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

The Vietnam "war" has convinced many persons that the president of the United States claims apparently unlimited power to commit this country to war. Not surprisingly, therefore, considerable interest has focused on the powers that inhere in the presidency. And many critics of the war – those who in other times and in other contexts might have been sympathetic to a spacious conception of presidential power – have concluded that the Vietnam conflict is not only a tragic error, but is the direct result of unconstitutional conduct by the president. I cannot accept this view; at bottom, it seems to …