The Lawfare Podcast: War Powers History You Never Knew with Matt Waxman

Benjamin Wittes
Saturday, March 9, 2019, 1:30 PM

For the past year, Matthew Waxman has been writing a series of vignettes on Lawfare about interesting—and usually overlooked—historical episodes of American constitutional war powers in action, and relating them to modern debates. These include the stories of St.

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

For the past year, Matthew Waxman has been writing a series of vignettes on Lawfare about interesting—and usually overlooked—historical episodes of American constitutional war powers in action, and relating them to modern debates. These include the stories of St. Claire’s Defeat and the Whiskey Rebellion during the Washington administration, congressional war powers and the surprisingly late termination of World War I, the proposed Ludlow Amendment during the interwar years, and Dwight Eisenhower’s surprisingly broad Taiwan force authorization.

I invited Matt on the podcast to talk about these episodes and how they fit together into the book broader project from which they sprung. It's a great discussion, very different from the usual war powers debates. Even if you think you know a lot about constitutional war powers, you’ll learn a lot.


Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books.

Subscribe to Lawfare