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The President’s Constitutional Authority to Use Limited Military Force

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2017

Phillip R. Trimble
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Extract

The United States intervention in Haiti concludes another chapter in the development of the constitutional common law of presidential power. The Haiti experience further confirms the constitutional authority of the President to deploy armed forces into hostile foreign environments, and to initiate the use of force without prior, specific congressional authorization. The facts of the situation limit the “precedent” to small-scale interventions where the risk of major military engagements, either initially or upon escalation, is negligible. The cases of largescale hostilities, like Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, are quite different in fact and perhaps also in law. But the Haiti “precedent,” coupled with the recent interventions in Grenada and Panama and innumerable examples earlier in history, strongly supports an unqualified presidential power to carry out small-scale military operations in support of foreign policy goals.

Type
Agora: The 1994 U.S. Action in Haiti
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 89 , Issue 1 , January 1995 , pp. 84 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1995

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References

1 S.J. Res. 229, 103d Cong., 2d Sess., 140 Cong. Rec. HI 1,297 (daily ed. Oct. 7, 1994).

2 Quoted in 140 Cong. Rec. at S10.663 (daily ed. Aug. 5, 1994).

3 Letter from Walter Dellinger, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, to Senators Dole, Simpson, Thurman and Cohen (Sept. 27, 1994), reprinted infra at p. 122.

4 140 Cong. Rec. S10,180 (daily ed. Aug. 1, 1994).

5 Id. at S10,418.

6 See 140 Cong. Rec. S10.663–78 (daily ed. Aug. 5, 1994).

7 N.Y. Times, Sept. 12, 1994, at A1.

8 140 Cong. Rec. H9040 (daily ed. Sept. 12, 1994).

9 H.J. Res. 416, 103d Cong., 2d Sess. (1994).

10 140 Cong. Rec. H10,973–74 (daily ed. Oct. 5, 1994).

11 Id. at H10,974.

12 Id. at H10,981.

13 S.J. Res. 229, supra note 1.

14 140 Cong. Rec. H11,113 (daily ed. Oct. 6, 1994).