War

In the U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 8, grants Congress the power “To declare War…” as well as the authority to raise and support armies, make rules for land and naval forces, and call out the state militias in time of emergency. Yet in Article II the Constitution designates the president as the commander in chief of the armed forces. To protect against a president’s becoming a military dictator, using the armed forces without any checks or balances on his power, the Separation of Powers principle on which the Constitution is based splits between the legislative branch and the executive branch the power to declare and fund a war and the power to direct military forces.

Although the United States has been at war on many occasions, Congress has formally declared war in only five cases: the War of 1812 (1812–14) against Great Britain, the Mexican War (1846–48), the Spanish-American War (1898), World War I (1914–18; U.S. declared in 1917), and World War II (1939–45; U.S. declared in 1941). During the two world wars, Congress enacted many laws that tightly controlled the nation’s economy and delegated power to the president to take actions necessary for the successful prosecution of the war, such as taking over factories, railroads, and the systems of communications, as well as setting prices and regulating factory production—measures that most likely would be found unconstitutional during peacetime. During the undeclared Korean War (1950–53), the attempt by President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) to take over the nation’s steel mills, without approval by Congress, was held unconstitutional by the [Page 575] Supreme Court in Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952) (see Emergency Powers). More recently, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), the Court decided by a 5–3 vote that, absent congressional authorization, the president does not have authority as commander in chief to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in the war on terror by the type of military commissions created by the executive branch for this purpose.

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