A Bellicose Founding Charter: The US and Providing for the “Common Defence”

In this book review, the author analyzes Akhil Reed Amar’s The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840. Specifically, the author focuses on Amar’s central thesis—that the fundamental reason behind the US Constitution was national security—and how that should affect our reading of the Constitution today. The author concludes that Amar’s book is noteworthy… Continue reading A Bellicose Founding Charter: The US and Providing for the “Common Defence”

An Army Turned Inward: Reforming the Insurrection Act to Guard Against Abuse

Elizabeth Goitein and Joseph Nunn argue that the Insurrection Act is one of the most powerful and wide-ranging authorities available to the President of the United States. The Act authorizes the president to deploy US armed forces and the militia to suppress insurrections, quell civil unrest and domestic violence, and otherwise enforce the law in… Continue reading An Army Turned Inward: Reforming the Insurrection Act to Guard Against Abuse

The Selling of a Precedent: The Past as Constraint on Congressional War Powers?

Has precedent eroded Congress’s war powers? James Lebovic looks to the various standards of social-scientific inquiry to suggest that an exclusive focus on legal analysis has unnecessarily limited the war powers debate in recent decades. Lebovic finds that even though Congress appears to defer to the President based on war powers precedent, it is often… Continue reading The Selling of a Precedent: The Past as Constraint on Congressional War Powers?