The Law: Controversy: Demise of the War Clause

Abstract

The framers sought to make Congress preeminent in war making, an understandable and plausible intention at the end of the eighteenth century. More than two hundred years later, the situation has changed profoundly. Prodigious technological development, the expiration of U. S. isolation, and the massive information advantages that now accrue to the executive have combined to undermine the reasoning that lay behind the fashioning of the War Clause. These realities have gained credence among members of Congress, judges, and the public at large, but have yet to be widely accepted in the academic community.