{"id":302,"date":"2023-06-02T14:21:46","date_gmt":"2023-06-02T14:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/reese-c-constitution-project-the-declare-war-clause\/"},"modified":"2023-06-02T21:11:23","modified_gmt":"2023-06-02T21:11:23","slug":"reese-c-constitution-project-the-declare-war-clause","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/reese-c-constitution-project-the-declare-war-clause\/","title":{"rendered":"Reese C-Constitution Project-The Declare War Clause"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Video<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"entry-content-asset\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Reese C-Constitution Project-Declare War Clause\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bTbH4C9vXv8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Written Component<\/h3>\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Declare War Clause is a part of the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution of the United States. The clause states \u201c<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Congress shall have Power . . . To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.\u201d The framers of the Constitution wished to include this clause to create a concrete limit on the power of the executive branch and disallow a single person from controlling such a momentous decision as Declaring War, unlike the British Monarchy where the king can declare war. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By vesting the power to declare war in the hands of Congress, the framers guaranteed that there would be checks and balances to the decision as Congress would need to vote to instigate a war. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The clause has commonly been understood as vesting the power to declare war in Congress in order to limit the power of the Executive Branch and add a democratic process into the steps to declare war However, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">it is slightly contested among scholars as a majority of scholars agree that Presidents cannot instigate wars without the permission of Congress while a minority believes that the Declare War Clause only gives Congress the power to make formal declarations of war and as a result, the President can declare war. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To support this point, some scholars have looked carefully at the language of the clause and argued that the power to \u201cdeclare war\u201d can be thought of as a formal declaration and not the use of military force. As well, these scholars have looked into the historical practices of the clause: In response to attacks on American Ships in the Bey of Tripoli during Thomas Jefferson&#8217;s presidency, Jefferson responded by sending ships to the Bey but instructed them to not attack the enemy ships and to only subdue them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Jefferson felt that by commanding his ships to not attack the enemies, he wouldn\u2019t be violating the Declare War Clause. In response to Jeffersons\u2019 actions, former Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, stated that he found the clause to be vesting the power to declare war in the hands of Congress, but if another country had initiated a war, as the Tripolitans had in this case, then the country was already in a state of war and due to this, no declaration was needed to initiate war and use violence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Using Jefferson\u2019s actions and Hamilton\u2019s view, scholars have argued that Presidents are allowed to deploy troops that are not involved in combat and initiate war if it is in response to attacks on the country. In the 1863 <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Prizes Case<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the Supreme Court sustained President Lincoln\u2019s blockade of southern states\u2019 ports, without the permission of Congress, in response to the state&#8217;s attack on Fort Sumter. The court concluded that the blockade was constitutional because a state of war was in place as a result of the attack, therefore, the permission of Congress was not needed. The case clearly illustrates the President\u2019s power to initiate war in the case of an attack on the country. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Declare War Clause distinctly exhibits the separation of powers, which was heavily implemented by the French in their constitutions and it represents how both the American and French constitutions were heavily influenced by each country&#8217;s negative experiences under monarchs. I find that the scholars who believe that the Declare War Clause only gives Congress the ability to formally declare war are a minority for a reason: It seems backwards to think that the framers of the Constitution would not add a key separation of powers and that instead, that they were only talking about formalities. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I believe this because the concept of separation of powers is one of the backbones of the constitution and so I feel that it is more reasonable that this clause is using the concept. If I had the ability to amend the clause I would opt to add a section stating that the President cannot declare war unless the country has been attacked or they have the permission of Congress. I think this adds a lot of clarity and prevents any future President from feeling like they could not use the full force needed because they were trying to follow the clause so carefully.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Declare War Clause is a part of the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution of the United States. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4556,"featured_media":229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[202,273,269,271,79,26,77,274,82,270,268,272,267,198,19,78],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-article-1","tag-article-1-section-8","tag-c","tag-carter","tag-clause","tag-constitution","tag-declare","tag-declare-war","tag-declare-war-clause","tag-project","tag-reese","tag-reese-c","tag-reese-c-constitution-project-the-declare-war-clause","tag-section-8","tag-the","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}