War Powers Resolution Case Study

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress and the president different responsibilities and duties over military powers, but there have long been disagreements about where one's war powers begin and the other's ends. The U.S. Constitution allows the president to wage wars as commander in chief while Congress has the power to declare and fund wars. Experts agree that presidents can order U.S. troops to fight when the country is attacked or attack appears probable but chief executives from both major parties often differ with Congress over their ability to initiate military force in other combat situations. Congress did respond to the growing executive power. In November 1973, the House and Senate jointly passed the War Powers Resolution, intending

After the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, President George Bush ordered a large force to deter further aggression. President Bush claimed that he had sufficient authority as president to launch the war without congressional approval. Like Truman, he relied on UN for backing for the war. The House reacted by passing a resolution stating that the President must seek approval from Congress before launching a war in the Gulf unless American lives were in imminent danger. The law ended up in federal court. The court ruled that it cannot decide such a political question, but criticized the President for believing that he alone could take the country to war in the absence of an

However, as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. argues, “presidential primacy, so indispensable to the political order, has turned into supremacy, and we can see an appropriation by the presidency of powers reserved by the constitution and by long historical practice to congress.” Although following president Richard Nixon’s resignation, Congress was resurgent and the foreign policy power of the presidency appeared to be waning, in the post-September 11 era, in dealing with terrorism, the Bush administration pushes the boundaries on the presidential use of force and threats the balance between the executive and legislative branches. However, Congress approved Bush’s request for $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan with little changes and failed to deal with the Iraqi prison abuse scandal. In the post-9/11 era Congress has failed to arrest the growth of the imperial presidency in foreign policy, rendering the WPR little more than a symbolic declaration of lost