Trump’s bombings present major constitutional and legal questions. But it’s up to Congress to force the issue
CNN
President Donald Trump’s order to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities presents a new test of the Constitution and the extent of presidential powers to conduct war despite a lack of congressional approval.
President Donald Trump’s order to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities presents a new test of the Constitution and the extent of presidential powers to conduct war despite a lack of congressional approval. The administration is relying on the president’s authority under Article II of the Constitution, two senior administration officials told CNN, which says he has power to direct US military forces in engagements necessary to advance American national interests abroad. The White House counsel’s office and the Justice Department were both involved in the legal analysis for the strikes. The administration relied, in part, on memos about war powers written by the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel under previous administrations of both parties. “The president is clearly well within his Article II powers here,” one former senior US official told CNN. “End of story.” But that’s not a view held by many legal experts or universally endorsed by Democratic and Republican lawmakers, who point to the Constitution’s unambiguous statement that only Congress can declare war, the absence of a law akin to the Iraq War-era Authorization for Use of Military Force and — critically — a lack of an imminent threat to the United States. In 1973, responding to the disastrous war in Vietnam, Congress overrode President Richard Nixon’s veto to pass an important piece of legislation, the War Powers Resolution, that sought to rein in presidents regarding the use of military force. “This is a large enough scale action that I think it’s likely that it should be considered a war, and not merely a small, severely limited strike. Therefore, it requires congressional authorization,” said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University and a scholar at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
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