Commander In Chief Research Articles

A Civilian Commander in Chief: Ben-Gurion's Mamlakhtiyut, the Army and the LawNir Kedar is a member of the Faculty of Law at Bar-Ilan University.

David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister and defence minister, is generally seen as a labour leader or a Zionist national leader. Even as a long-term prime minister, he is regarded as a ‘sec...

A Civilian Commander in Chief: David Ben-Gurion, the Israeli Army and the Law

David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime-minister, is regarded more of a security-minded leader than a civilian leader. Nevertheless, as premier of a fledgling state, he played a major role in shaping Israel's civil institutions and establishing democracy and the rule of law. Even his attitude toward the army and security matters derived from a solidly-constructed civil-legal weltanschauung. This paper demonstrates the civil roots of his concept of army by analyzing his insistent demand for the enactment of a comprehensive and efficient military criminal code (known in Israel as the Military Justice Law).

Is It “President” or “president” of the United States?

Virtually every political observer who has used pen or keyboard in past several decades has asked: is it President or of United States? Should office or institution be referred to as Presidency or presidency? At first blush, such questions appear rather humorous and insignificant. Symbolically, grammatical capitalization reflects importance of office or title. Consequently, change in capitalization of constitutional officer may reflect shift in academic, journalistic, or public perception of that office. Hoekstra (1982) considers importance of introduction of term textbook but does not examine related capitalization change we demonstrate has taken place over past several decades. A closer examination of these seemingly innocuous observations about capitalization shows change in common usage that apparently coincides with evolution and state of Presidency (or presidency). If we consider President (or of United States to be both a person and an institution, and if Constitution intends legislative, executive, and judicial branches to be coequal institutions of government, one would expect to see capitalization of and and President. Yet that is not current practice. Several examples from political science textbooks illustrate this inconsistency: Congress could check power of president, Supreme Court, and so on, carefully creating balance among three branches. (O'Connor and Sabato 1997, 57) Supreme Court can declare laws passed by Congress and signed by unconstitutional. (Burns et al. 2000, 25) Legally, can.., and Congress did not renew it... Supreme Court declared that.... (Wilson 1986, 349) Indeed, one recent monograph has gone so far as to decapitalize in title of book: Foley and Owens's Congress and presidency (1996). inconsistent capitalization of title of United States and related titles is widespread in political science. It is common to see decapitalized simultaneously portrayed as capitalized in Chief. For example, Dye (1994, 394) states, As Commander-in-Chief of armed forces of United States, is voice in foreign affairs. Similarly, Saffell (1981, 323) writes, The Constitution confers upon title of Commander in Chief of armed forces of United It is widespread practice to capitalize of House while decapitalizing of United States. Consider Edwards, Wattenberg, and Lineberry, who declare the is also two heartbeats away from presidency, being in line (after vice president) to succeed who resigns, dies in office, or is impeached (Edwards, Wattenberg, and Lineberry 1998, 297) or Patterson, who asserts the is often said to be official in Washington, after president (Patterson 1997, 337). Why should second powerful official be symbolically printed in uppercase while most official appears in lowercase? Although capitalization of Speaker is often justified on grounds of clarity (to avoid confusion with other speakers on floor of House; see Chicago Manual of Style 1993, 241), it is equally important to distinguish President of United States from other presidents. After all, President of United States frequently addresses assemblages of college presidents, corporation presidents, association presidents, presidents of other nation-states, and even other presidents in U.S. Congress. For example, of United States typically begins State of Union address with following salutation: Mr. …

After the Conquest: Michilimackinac, a Borderland in Transition, 1760-1763

After the Conquest: Mchilimackinac, a Borderland inTransition, 1760-1763 by Keith R.Widder On the morning of June 2, 1763, opposing teams of Ojibwe and Sac warriors played a game of baggatiway or lacrosse outside the land gate of Fort Michilimackinac. The Ojibwe used the contest as a ruse to surprise British officers and soldiers who had gathered to watch the action. When a ball was thrown over the palisade, some players raced into the fort where they killed one British officer, twenty enlisted men, and one trader; in addition, they took as their prisoners two officers, fifteen soldiers, and two traders. The Ojibwe plundered the traders' goods, but they left French-Canadian bystanders unharmed.1 Ojibwe mistrust and fear of British policies and behavior that began with the French surrender of Montreal to Gen. Jeffery Amherst on September 8, 1760, led to this violence. And these hostilities at the fort meant that the Ojibwe and other Native Peoples still needed to negotiate their relationship with British officials if a lasting peace were ever to be realized. An analysis of events beginning with the arrival of British troops and merchants in September 1761 shows that the Indians, French, and British struggled to redefine the economic and diplomatic boundaries within a vast borderland surrounding Michilimackinac in the aftermath of the British conquest of Canada. Frontier regions are incubators for friction, and in this case the war between France and Great Britain had not yet really ended for the people in the Michilimackinac borderland. French troops remained in Illinois; and the full impact of the Treaty of Paris agreed to by Great Britain and France in February 1763, ending The author would like to thank Robert J. Andrews, David A. Armour, David T. Bailey, Donald P. Heldman, Elizabeth M. Scott, and Agnes Haigh Widder for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. 1 Milo M. Quaife, ed., Alexander Henry's Travels andAdventures in the Years 1760-1776 (Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1921), 78-85; Todd E. Harburn, In Defense of the Red Ensign at Michilimackinac 1763: The British Garrison during Pontiac's Uprising at Michilimackinac and Copt. George Etherington's Company 60th or Royal American Regiment (Okemos, Mich.: Michilimackinac Society Press, 2000). Michigan Historical Re view 34:1 (Spring 2008): 43-61 ?2008 by Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved. 44 Michigan Historical Review the Seven Years' War, had not yet been felt atMichilimackinac. Thus, unresolved issues burst into violence in June 1763. With the fall of Montreal the French and Indian War ended in Canada and the eastern English colonies, but peace in the Michilimackinac borderland awaited British negotiation with the Indian nations of the western Great Lakes. Under pressure from Whitehall to reduce expenses,2 Gen. Jeffery Amherst, the commander in chief of the British Army inNorth America, devised a simple policy for the pays d'en haut^ also known as the upper country?make peace and carry on a fair, free fur trade.3 By May 1763, however, a viable peace still remained elusive and violence broke out in what historians commonly refer to as Pontiac's Uprising or Pontiac's War. Between May 16 and June 19, Indians captured English posts at Sandusky (Sandusky, Ohio), St. Joseph (Niles, Mich.), Miami (Fort Wayne, Ind.), Ouiatanon (Lafayette, Ind.), Mchilimackinac (Mackinaw City, Mich.), Venango (Franklin, Pa.), Le Boeuf (Waterford, Pa.), and Presque Isle (Erie, Pa.). British garrisons, however, held Fort Detroit, Fort Niagara, and Fort Pitt, which enabled Britain to prevent the Indians from winning the war.4 At least three 2Richard Middleton, Pontiac's War: Its Causes, Course, and Consequences (New York: Routiedge, 2007), 19-22. 3Amherst's policy of peace and trade was not new; it formed the basis of the ongoing Iroquois-British relationship, but Amherst's methods differed from the traditional British approach toward establishing peaceful and profitable relations with the Iroquois. Timothy J. Shannon declares that the Covenant Chain "maintained peace and trade between British colonies, the Six Iroquois Nations, and other Indians associated with their confederacy." He also makes the point that friendship between the Iroquois and the British needed "to be periodically 'brightened' or renewed by engaging in diplomatic councils and...

Commander in chief: how Truman, Johnson, and Bush turned a presidential power into a threat to America's future

Commander in chief: how Truman, Johnson, and Bush turned a presidential power into a threat to America's future

Tadeus Reichstein, co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine: On the occasion of the 110th anniversary of his birth in Poland

Tadeus Reichstein (1897-1996) was the first scientist born in Poland to receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology (1950) for the "discovery of hormones of the adrenal cortex, their structure and biological effects", as stated by the Nobel Prize Committee. His family being deeply devoted to Polish cultural and historical heritage, his first name was given to him after Tadeus Kosciuszko, a chief commander of the 18th century Polish uprising named the Kosciuszko Insurrection. As a child, he emigrated with his family to Switzerland, where he was much later to become involved in numerous research studies on steroids on an international scale. It was Tadeus Reichstein who isolated and synthesized desoxycorticosterone, which still remains the drug of first choice in the treatment of Addison's disease. Additionally, thanks to his strategy for the mass production of Vitamin C, the cost of this agent was drastically reduced thus enabling its widespread therapeutic use. In our divided world so often torn by tremendous conflicts, there is a great need to both remember and commemorate such distinguished people as Tadeus Reichstein who, despite the apparent "borders" between different nationalities and cultures, have demonstrated through their work the huge need for harmonious collaboration in the development of science.

Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney: slavery, secession, and the president's war powers

The clashes between President Abraham Lincoln and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney over slavery, secession, and the president's constitutional war powers went to the heart of Lincoln's presidency. James F. Simon, author of the acclaimed What Kind of Nation - an account of the battle between President Thomas Jefferson and Chief Justice John Marshall to define the new nation - brings to vivid life the passionate struggle during the worst crisis in the nation's history, the Civil War. The issues that underlaid that crisis - race, states' rights, and the president's wartime authority - resonate today in the nation's political debate. Lincoln and Taney's bitter disagreements began with Taney's Dred Scott opinion in 1857, when the chief justice declared that the Constitution did not grant the black man any rights that the white man was bound to honor. In the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln attacked the opinion as a warped judicial interpretation of the Framers' intent and accused Taney of being a member of a pro-slavery national conspiracy. In his first inaugural address, President Lincoln insisted that the South had no legal right to secede. Taney, who administered the oath of office to Lincoln, believed that the South's secession was legal and in the best interests of both sections of the country. Once the Civil War began, Lincoln broadly interpreted his constitutional powers as commander in chief to prosecute the war, suspending the writ of habeas corpus, censoring the mails, and authorizing military courts to try civilians for treason. Taney opposed every presidential wartime intiative and openly challenged Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. He accused the president of assuming dictatorial powers in violation of the Constitution. Lincoln ignored Taney's protest, convinced that his actions were both constitutional and necessary to preserve the union. Almost 150 years after Lincoln's and Taney's deaths, their words and actions reverberate in constitutional debate and political battle. Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney tells their dramatic story in fascinating detail.

Commander in Chief: How Truman, Johnson, and Bush Turned a Presidential Power into a Threat to America's Future by Geoffrey Perret

Commander in Chief: How Truman, Johnson, and Bush Turned a Presidential Power into a Threat to America's Future <i>by Geoffrey Perret</i>

Shaping and Reshaping Colonial Ottomanism: Contesting Boundaries of Difference and Integration in Ottoman Yemen, 1872-1919

n 19 October 1911 Ahmed ‘Izzet Pasa, the commander in chief of the Ottoman military forces in Yemen, and the Zaydi imam al-Mutawakkil Yahya ibn Muhammad (d. 1948) signed an agreement at Da‘‘an that made Yahya a dependent ruler and Zaydi community leader under Ottoman sovereignty. This agreement brought to a close more than two decades of fi erce confrontation between the imam and his predecessors on one side and the imperial government in Istanbul on the other. Historians of Yemen have interpreted the Da‘‘an agreement as Imam Yahya’s fi rst step toward building an independent Yemeni state, a goal that he would eventually realize in the years following the withdrawal of the Ottomans from southwest Arabia in the aftermath of World War I.1 In this article I demonstrate that this agreement and the political arrangements it ushered in also tell us something important about imperial governance in the late Ottoman Empire. More specifi cally, I argue that the negotiated settlement with the imam as well as the political struggles, controversies, and alternative schemes that preceded it were all integral parts of those politics of difference that came to demarcate the Province of Yemen as a subordinate, colonial space within the Ottoman imperial system. From the 1860s, the Ottoman central government and its representatives made unprecedented attempts to implement throughout the empire a uniform system of administration, taxation, military recruitment, and education in order to ward off both the encroachments on the part of European imperial powers and separatist challenges at the domestic level. These efforts intensifi ed during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876–1909). Under the auspices of Ottomanism, which has often been interpreted as a form of offi cial nationalism, the objective was to forge a population of loyal Ottoman subjects or protocitizens in order to make the empire more resilient against these external and internal pressures.2 To be sure, these attempts

Cold War Scholars and Thinking about Warfare

Only a handful of intellectuals in U.S. history have occupied positions of highest political authority. And when placed in charge, scholars have not done demonstrably better than those chief executives drawn from other vocational backgrounds—connected, say, to law, commerce, or the military. An able political theorist, James Madison proved an ineffective commander in chief during the 1812 fiasco. Professor Woodrow Wilson, once released from Princeton University and installed in the White House, took his nation into an avoidable war in 1917 and then, via bungling, prevented U.S. involvement in his vaunted League of Nations. Most American intellectuals, fascinated by the practical problems of power, have been content to give advice from the sideline. And some, when sufficiently riled, have offered criticism, or, more grandly, have chosen to “speak truth to power.” The people scrutinized in Bruce Kuklick's fascinating Blind Oracles belonged almost entirely to the former category. Many of them...

The Commander in Chief and the Courts

The Bush administration claims to have sweeping, inherent, and unchecked war powers to conduct its war against terror. These claims are inconsistent with the text of the Constitution, the Framers' intent, and the practice of the early leaders of the Republic. Judicial decisions in the first few decades after the Constitution's adoption affirmed the Framers' narrow view of executive war powers. This article will address the extent of the president's inherent powers to prosecute a war, whether Congress can regulate and limit the president's commander‐in‐chief power, and the role of the courts in deciding whether the president has overstepped his power in conducting warfare.

The Manifold Uses of the Epic Past: The Embassy Scene in Herodotus 7.153-63

In the Syracusan embassy scene (Hdt. 7.153–63), both the Spartan and the Athenian envoys invoke the epic past to buttress their claims to the chief command; against this, Gelon pits the youthful vigour of his recent superpower, calling his army the "spring of Greece." However, intertextual links undermine the claims of all three and evoke the later fights for hegemony. This analysis sheds light on the way Herodotus uses the widespread juxtaposition of the Trojan and Persian Wars and helps to assess the relation of his Histories to non-historiographical genres.

Book Reviews

At a time when U.S. book publishers have made 9/11 and terrorism into their own literary genres with over 2,000 books currently available, Carol Winkler’s In the Name of Terrorism: Presidents on Political Violence in the Post–World War II Era is a timely, important, and unique work. Readable as a history, a policy analysis, and as a rhetorical study, this book stands out because the author reminds us that the idea of terrorism has been an important weapon in every presidential administration’s linguistic arsenal since the 1960s. More importantly, she illustrates how the deployment of the concept in presidential discourse has usefully served to label enemies, establish cultural narratives, and—for better and worse—shape the direction of U.S. policy. In her quest for the definition of this vexing topic, Winkler directs her attention to the executive branch. The combination of president as commander in chief of the armed forces and as chief translator of clandestine intelligence data for the American public makes, “the executive branch … the single most vital source for understanding how terrorism functions within American culture” (p. 7). According to Winkler, what presidents say—and what they say about terrorism in particular—deserves attention because these utterances often justify the exercise of power.

How to Win the Nobel Prize?

Based on the title—The Beginner's Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize—one might expect Peter Doherty's new book to be a handbook targeted to the emerging group of anxious parents whose expectations for their youngsters' achievements have reached the stratospheric level. In truth, this is a delightful history and series of essays by an affable Australian veterinarian—sort of a James Herriott of science—who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in medicine. I enjoyed sitting down with this book as much as I enjoy slipping on a comfortable old pair of shoes and sitting in our garden on a Saturday evening with a glass of wine. Doherty's book will make an interesting and entertaining read for scientists and will provide a delightful experience for the nonscientists, who may be impressed to learn how decent and truly normal an internationally renowned scientist can be.

The Law: George Bush as Commander in Chief: Toward the Nether World of Constitutionalism

The Bush administration has advanced an expansive conception of the Commander-in-Chief Clause that has launched presidential power on a trajectory toward the realm of illimitable and unaccountable power, the nether world of American constitutionalism. President Bush would ascribe to the commander in chief powers that were never possessed by the president when the post was incorporated into the Constitution, and which may not be engrafted by a theory of a presidential revisory power. This essay contends that President Bush's claims, which find no foundation in the values, goals, and concerns that shaped the clause, represent a profound threat to constitutional government and republican values.

The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs After 9/11

The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs After 9/11. By John Yoo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 378p. 19.00 paper.Most readers of this journal will recognize the name of John Yoo, legal architect of the Bush administration's most controversial policies in the war on terror. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Yoo played a decisive role in the Office of Legal Counsel to the U.S. Department of Justice, where he regularly defended the most extreme legal options under consideration by the administration. In August 2002, he penned a memo arguing that both international and domestic legal prohibitions on torture represent illegitimate restraints on presidential power. His legal views rapidly gained the upper hand because they told the president what he wanted to hear: As commander in chief, the president can do pretty much whatever he wants in order to protect the American people.

Kazimierz Sosnkowski as Commander in Chief: The Government-in-Exile and Polish Strategy, 1943-1944

Lieutenant General Kazimierz Sosnkowski's term as commander in chief of the armed forces of the Polish government-in-exile from 8 July 1943 to 29 September 1944 can be used to assess Polish strategy. His belief that pursuing a major military contribution could not guarantee the state's independence and integrity in the postwar period and his views on international relations were challenged by civilian leaders as well as the Home Army High Command. The assault on Monte Cassino in May 1944 and the Warsaw Uprising in August and September demonstrate the powerlessness of the exiles against the dominant currents of alliance politics.

Dictatorship, society, and genocide in Argentina: repression in Rosario, 1976–19831

Throughout the decade of 1970 the Latin American Southern Cone was the setting for the bloodiest military dictatorship the region experienced.2 It was marked, as they all were, by far-reaching repr...

Assessing the Impeachment of President Bill Clinton from a Post 9/11 Perspective

The impeachment of President Clinton was more a circus than a serious effort to remove the President of the United States. The reason is simple: Few people -- in the Congress or the country -- wanted to remove him or believed the impeachment effort would actually result in his removal. Instead, it was a partisan political effort to embarrass Clinton and send a message of disapproval. Congress was attaching a scarlet letter. But this was an indulgence that posed considerable danger that few in Congress considered. In particular, few tried to assess the potential impact this use of the process would have on the President's ability to govern and be Commander in Chief. This article will argue that such a frivolous use of the impeachment process is inappropriate and dangerous, especially in a post 9/11 world. The framers of the Constitution had it right; impeachment is a drastic remedy to be invoked only as last resort. This article will compare the Clinton impeachment with the two prior efforts to impeach a president: Andrew Johnson in the 1860's and Richard Nixon in the 1970's. In that comparison, it will note that, unlike the Clinton impeachment, those were serious efforts to remove a president from office, not merely attach a scarlet letter. Finally, it will assess what factors allowed this misuse of the impeachment process and how we can avoid it in the future. It will suggest that the exuberance of the 1990s, the apparent absence of outside enemies at the time, and the security of seats in the House of Representatives (so-called safe legislative seats) contributed to this nonchalant -- and dangerous -- attitude toward impeachment. September 11, 2001 changed some of those factors, but not all.

Parsing the Commander in Chief Power: Three Distinctions

The panel was convened at 2:45 p.m., Friday, March 31, by its chair, Curtis Bradley of Duke University of Law, who introduced the panelists: David Golove of the New York University School of Law; John Harrison of the University of Virginia School of Law; Thomas Hemingway of the Office of Military Commissions; and Deborah Pearlstein of Human Rights First. * PARSING THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF POWER: THREE DISTINCTIONS As Justice Jackson noted in the Youngstown steel seizure case, the Commander in Chief Clause has given rise to some of the most persistent controversies in our constitutional history. (1) That clause is being invoked by the executive branch in connection with a number of contemporary controversies, including the military detention of suspected terrorists, the use of military commissions to try terrorists, and the National Security Agency's post-September 11th program of warrantless surveillance. In considering the powers of the commander in chief in these contexts, it is useful to keep in mind several distinctions: between the President's statutory and constitutional authority; between the President's inherent and exclusive constitutional authority; and between international law as an external limitation and international law as an internal limitation on the President. First is the distinction between the President's statutory authority and his constitutional authority. When Congress has granted the President the authority to carry out a war-related activity, courts are likely to defer to the combined judgment of the political branches, and will typically avoid reaching the question of whether the President would have had the authority to carry out the action in the absence of congressional authorization. In these situations, presidential action will fall within the highest category of the framework suggested by Justice Jackson in Youngstown for evaluating claims of presidential authority and therefore will be supported by the strongest of presumptions and the widest latitude of judicial interpretation. (2) In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, for example, the Supreme Court concluded that President Bush had the authority under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which Congress enacted shortly after the September 11 attacks, to detain a U.S. citizen who had been captured during the fighting in Afghanistan, and the Court declined to reach the question of whether the president would have had this authority in the absence of the AUMF. (3) Similarly, in Ex parte Quirin, the Court concluded that President Roosevelt had the authority under Article 15 of the Articles of War (now Section 821 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice) to try a group of German saboteurs (including one who may have been a U.S. citizen) by military commission, without reaching the question of whether this action fell within the President's constitutional authority. (4) A second distinction that can be drawn is between the President's inherent constitutional authority and his exclusive constitutional authority. The inherent constitutional authority of the President simply refers to authority that the President has independent of any grant of authority by Congress. Because the Constitution gives war-related powers both to the President and to Congress, the inherent powers of the President in this area are likely to overlap with the powers of Congress. That is, the powers of the two branches on some issues will be concurrent. …