PAUL CELLA: Formal Warmaking Authority Now Resides With The President

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Editor’s note: Big Tent Ideas always aims to provide balancing perspectives on the hottest issues of the day. Below is a column from Paul Cella, where he argues that the Executive Branch has the legitimate warmaking authority. You can find a counterpoint here, where Brandan Buck argues otherwise.

While always a misfortune, war may be necessary and can be just, provided certain criteria are met. It must be waged for a just cause, after exhausting recourse to negotiation; it must have peace as its goal, compassing even the good of the enemy; it must be undertaken with rectitude of intention, holding out a reasonable prospect of success; and it must be declared by legitimate public authority.

The war against Iran falls short of justification on many of these grounds; on the last, however – the criterion of legitimate sovereignty – it has provided a service to the American people by clarifying for us that formal warmaking authority now resides with the President.

Put another way: it is no longer reasonable to suppose that Congress possesses the exclusive constitutional authority to declare war.

This........

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