It's Time to Revisit the President's War Powers
For now the question whether President Trump needed congressional authorization to take military action against Iran is academic. Nevertheless, Peggy Noonan is right that the framers vested Congress, not the president, with the power to declare war ('Iraq's Shadow Over the Iran Debate,' Declarations, June 21).
That power is in tension with the fact, underscored by the Supreme Court's Civil War-era Prize Cases, that the president has not merely the authority but the duty to quell foreign threats to American national security and vital interests. The matter of whether there is such a viable threat is a political one, left by the Constitution to officials electorally accountable to the people whose lives are at stake. It is nonjusticiable: Congress must vindicate its own authority because the courts won't.
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