Mariah Zeisberg has a piece entitled Debate over War Powers Resolution may yield positive outcome at the National Constitution Center's blog. Here is a taste:
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Constitutional and statutory text that does not define the meaning of the key words that separate one institution’s authority from another necessarily insert some measure of uncertainty into the branches’ war powers regime.
What to make of these tensions and ambiguities? Has the Constitution failed in its task to provide a definitive legal framework that can guide decision-makers about important questions such as which institution has the power to take the country to war? Isn’t the point of a Constitution to resolve this kind of conflict? If it is so pervasively difficult to read our political culture and know which branch has war authority, then does that mean that the Constitution has failed to do its job – or worse, that we are witnessing an epidemic of reckless infidelity to the Constitution’s mandates?
In fact, I think that uncertainty as to the meaning of the Constitution’s war powers regime in Syria is not catastrophic but may actually carry benefits.
