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politics + society

Congress once fought to limit a president’s war powers − more than 50 years later, its successors are less willing to assert their authority

Congress once fought to limit a president’s war powers − more than 50 years later, its successors are less willing to assert their authority

Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, not the president. But most modern presidents and their legal counsel have asserted that Article 2 of the Constitution allows the president to use the military in certain situations without prior congressional approval – and have acted
Sarah Burns, Rochester Institute of Technology, Institute for Humane Studies