Word: powering
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...legal dilemma involves two competing clauses in the nation's governing document. Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution states, "The Congress shall have Power . . . to declare War." But according to Article II, Section 2, "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." In Judge Greene's courtroom, Attorney Stuart Gerson of the Justice Department argued that history provides numerous examples of Presidents exercising their powers as Commander in Chief without a formal declaration of war. Thomas Jefferson, he noted, committed the Navy to battle against the Barbary pirates without a green...
...forward by Secretary of State James Baker, that presidential consultation with Congress would be a legally sufficient substitute for a formal declaration of war. "The structure and history of the Constitution," Tribe contends, "make clear that the framers deliberately rejected any scheme that would give the Chief Executive the power to make the basic decision in favor...
...that there have been at least 130 acts of war that lacked congressional approval. "The number is widely inflated," he says. "A lot of them don't count, since they were for limited circumstances and for short periods of time." In his view, the fact that the congressional war-power clause has sometimes been ignored does not render it moot. Says Van Alstyne: "The extent to which the allocation of war powers has been disregarded for the past 25 years is no reason we should continue to disregard...
Even if he and higher courts sidestep the problem, Congress can stay the President's hand by exercising another power found in Article I, Section 8: refusing to fund the war, as Congress eventually did in Vietnam. But the ultimate check on White House adventurism may be the one noted by the late American historian Clinton Rossiter: "The people with their overt or silent resistance, not the court with its power of judicial review, will set the only practical limits to arrogance of abuse...
...paper, Mikhail Gorbachev has accumulated more power than most heads of state ever dream of possessing. Last week the Soviet parliament granted him even greater authority by approving a presidential plan to place the government directly under his control. Only this time, Gorbachev's victory seemed more like a retreat from his pursuit of democratic reforms. Under growing pressure to halt the country's descent into political and economic chaos, the Soviet leader appears to be recasting himself in a conservative mold...