Law Commons^™

Constitutional Control Of Military Actions: A Comparative Dimension, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this essay is to examine some aspects of the legal framework for military activity in the internal law of some of the world's most powerful states. The international community has a major stake in the constitutional evolution of member states as regards the authority to decide to go to war. That stake – or those interests, since they are plural (and hold some possibility for contradiction) – can be identified as follows:

(1) to strengthen trends toward constitutionalism generally, by which I mean the concept of governance based on law;
(2) to strengthen trends toward civilian control …