Ben observed last week that in the midst of the most significant war powers debate of this Presidency, many of the top national security legal positions in the Administration remain unfilled.

The draft Senate Syria AUMF contains a narrower authorization for the use of presidential force than the one the administration proposed.  But it is in some respects still broad, and it actually enhances...

I recently posted my new paper on The Constitutional Power to Threaten War (forthcoming, Yale Law Journal).  The basic idea is that existing debate and legal scholarship about constitutional war powers f...

As Congress moves to debate authorization for the use of force in Syria, and especially since there is some question about whether DOD has adequate funding for a strike in Syria, Congress may want to pon...

One claim that is being made about President Obama’s decision to seek congressional authorization for military action in Syria is that it is likely to weaken the authority of the presidency with respect ...

Over the next week we are going to see a lot of debate about the substantive scope of the Syria/WMD AUMF, much of it directed at whether the administration's draft or other draft language might end up be...

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Via Ilya Somin at Volokh, I see that the administration has proffered its proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) for Syria.  Now it is Congress’s turn to decide what proposal(s) it w...

Peter Spiro at OJ, and David Rothkopf of FP whom he cites, both say that President Obama’s request for congressional authorization for Syria will allow Congress to hamstring future Presidents from using ...

My Brookings colleague Bruce Riedel, who directs the institution's Intelligence Project following a 30-year career in the CIA, writes in with the following comments on President Obama's speech this after...

I have been hard on the President – on this blog last week, and today in the NYT – for what just about everyone (except Philip Bobbitt) thought was going to be his strike in Syria without congressional a...

Philip Bobbitt has an interesting piece from yesterday that compares the different British and American outlooks on confrontation with Syria, and recommends a course of action in Washington.  He notes th...