"Presidential War Power"

Paper Summary:

This paper reports the history of the power of the presidents to declare a state of emergency and to wage war based on the book "Presidential War Power" by Louis Fisher.This paper explains that the concept of presidential War Powers stands in contrast with the ideas of the framers of the Constitution, who believed that Congress and the President should make the decision to wage war jointly. The author reports that Fisher argues that the War Powers Resolution needs revisiting; that Congress is never conferred with when the United States is involved in military actions.

From the Paper:

"International policy continued to be dictated by Congress: although the President was responsible for the army and navy. In some cases, the President would maintain an activist foreign policy, setting an agenda that would be succinctly approved by Congress. This was the case during the Mexican-American War, when President James K. Polk "notified Congress that "war exists."" Calhoun, the most prominent Carolinian politician of the day, was one of the few dissenters. His response was: "I distinguish between hostilities and war, and God forbid that, acting under the Constitution, we should ever confound one with the other." (Fisher 32) That members of Congress might even remain this level of circumspection even when the continental United States was attacked by an invading foreign power gives one some impression of the keen grip Congress wished to maintain on war-making authority."

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