War Powers Commission calls for new system to promote executive-legislative cooperation

War Powers Commission calls for new system to promote executive-legislative cooperation

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff
 
The National War Powers Commission, co-chaired by former U.S. Secretaries of State James Baker and Warren Christopher, has recommended that Congress repeal the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and substitute a new statute that would provide for more meaningful consultation between the president and Congress on matters of war. Baker is also the honorary chairman of Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

Rice President David Leebron served as an ex officio member of the Baker-Christopher commission.

Congress passed the War Powers Resolution of 1973 to address the issue of when a U.S. president could send the military into a conflict, but that resolution has been the subject of debate, and has sometimes been ignored, over the three decades that followed. The current commission concluded that the 1973 resolution has failed to promote cooperation between the two branches of government and recommended that Congress pass a new statute — the War Powers Consultation Act of 2009 — that would establish a clear process on decisions to go to war.

”This statute does not attempt to resolve the constitutional questions that have dominated the debate over the war powers, and does not prejudice the president or Congress their right or ability to assert their respective constitutional war powers,” Baker said. ”What we aim to do with this statute is to create a process that will encourage the two branches to cooperate and consult in a way that is both practical and true to the spirit of the Constitution.”

The Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia impaneled the National War Powers Commission in February 2007. The bipartisan commission met seven times over 13 months, interviewing more than 40 witnesses about the respective war powers of the president and Congress. 
 
Commission members were Slade Gorton, former U.S. Senator from Washington; Lee Hamilton, former congressman from Indiana; Carla Hills, former U.S. trade representative; John Marsh Jr., former secretary of the Army; Edwin Meese, former U.S. attorney general; Abner Mikva, former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; J. Paul Reason, former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet; Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser; Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University; and Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution.  
 
The Commission was organized and sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Rice’s Baker Institute served as one of the partnering institutions. The Baker Institute’s director, Edward Djerejian, advised the commission.

To view the Commission’s report, go to www.bakerinstitute.org/publications/National%20War%20Powers%20Commission%20Report.pdf/view.