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> The Constitution does not say that war must be declared for the armed forces to operate. It does. Armed forces killing people is a state of war. If not, it's

> The Constitution does not say that war must be declared for the armed forces to operate. It does. Armed forces killing people is a state of war. If not, it's policing then it's under the judiciary authority, not the president.

psunavy03 2y ago
> Armed forces killing people is a state of war. Real life is rarely this black and white.
- clob 2y ago
  Which is why we invented laws and legal systems to codify such things. Did you commit a crime, yes/no? Let's bring it to trial. The circumstances are messy in all real world instances, but the outcome is binary. Refusing to even put a president on trial is more black and white, because it's a clear "no, not illegal" without even discussion.
  - davidmurdoch 2y ago
    Courts don't even decide yes/no. Maybe is an outcome. We don't know is also an outcome.
- grotorea 2y ago
  Doubly so since almost everyone stopped bothering to declare war after WW2.
nradov 2y ago
Huh? Federal law enforcement falls under the executive branch, not judicial. Have you even read the Constitution?
- nostrademons 2y ago
  Federal (and state, and local) law enforcement are not empowered to kill. Their job is to bring defendants to trial, where the judicial system determines innocence or guilt and then determines the sentence. If they were, the whole cop-killers, BLM, excessive use of force issue would not be an issue. The law would just say "Okay, a cop killed someone, that's their job, get over it." You can argue that the criminal justice system is too light on cops, but the fact that the criminal justice system is even involved means that killing people is not part of a cop's official job duties.
  - mywittyname 2y ago
    Qualified immunity is used as a defense in a lot of these cases. Practically speaking, law enforcement does have broad authority to kill people. So long as that death falls under the training guidelines written by the department, then it's unlikely the officer in question will face any punishment. Now, killing a person might be seen as a violation of their civil rights, entitling their estate to compensation for the death. But that's a punishment for the state, not the individuals involved.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      That's muddling nouns a bit. Law enforcement individuals have extremely limited authority to kill people, exclusively(?) based on self-defense. The law enforcement system has the right to authorize the killing of people but is subject to judicial review. Ergo, if a law enforcement individual breaks guidelines and kills someone, they're charged. If a law enforcement individual follows guidelines and kills someone, then the system is charged. (E.g. state/federal lawsuits, consent decrees, etc)
OgsyedIE 2y ago
Art. 1 sec. 8 does not say that and no other part of the U.S. constitution mentions war.
BobaFloutist 2y ago
>If not, it's policing then it's under the judiciary authority, not the president. Wait, what? Executive branch pretty explicitly encompasses enforcement. The Justice Department is part of the Executive branch. Unless by "Judiciary authority" you meant the Justice Department, and not the Judiciary branch of the federal government, and by "not the president" you were very specifically discussing the semi-independence the Justice department has from the president.
janalsncm 2y ago
Congress has the power to declare war. But Congress has also passed the War Powers Act which states the President can use the military for short periods of time. Are you claiming the War Powers Act is unconstitutional?
- InTheArena 2y ago
  The War Powers Act is exactly the type of law that the Supreme Court has been going after. Bills that give power that was meant for one branch of government to a different branch, or abrogating that power.
  - mywittyname 2y ago
    The problem with SCOTUS going after these laws is that they are a matter of practicality. If an attack is launched on the USA, the military and the President aren't going to sit back and let it happen, they will act. When the constitution was drafted, time delays necessitated that the military and the President act autonomously for the most part. Congress couldn't convene rapidly enough to expect them to have much say in all but the largest and most drawn out conflicts. The War Powers Act is codifying this implicit power. The framers never considered a situation where the President and Congress is watching a conflict play out across the world in real-time and making decisions. So it's literally impossible to say how they wanted this to be handled. That's why they gave Congress the powers to write laws.
    - secstate 2y ago
      And yet, now here we are in the 21st century, where it feels like we're on the opposite side of the time delay problem. Instead of the War Powers Act, what if we allowed congresspeople to use PEKs to vote by proxy in the case of an emergency (definition needed)? Surely that would be better than creating a all-but-in-title king out of the executive branch as concerns conflict?
      - rtkwe 2y ago
        The security issues around that are similar to the issues with electronic voting and have been covered exhaustively. You're creating the absolutely juiciest target for hacks and espionage. I would say they could meet by remote teleconference but that has issues now too with deep fakes getting better and better. On a similar note the communication time has vastly narrowed but so has the ability to perform attacks.
margalabargala 2y ago
> > The Constitution does not say that war must be declared for the armed forces to operate. > It does. Since the Constitution is a publicly available document, would you please point me to the spot where it says that? Thanks.
- thurn 2y ago
  There is a certain amount of deliberate ambiguity to Article I Section 8 -- take a look at e.g. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_817.asp https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_817.asp and you can see that the wording "The Congress shall have power to [...] declare war" was revised from "make war" in the earlier drafts. Madison clearly felt that Congressional authorization was on some level required to conduct a war, but that the Executive should be free to act quickly in self-defense, e.g. to repel an invasion.
  - mywittyname 2y ago
    Like a lot of things, this seems to fall under the idea of "convention" and not law. This has been an ongoing problem in recent times. Practically speaking, Congress is a rubber stamp for matters of war. Theoretically, they can withhold funding from the military. But seeing as the Treasury Department falls under the President, it's unlikely they can actually do that.
    - rtkwe 2y ago
      Legally though the power of the purse also lies with Congress. If we're throwing in extra constitutional actions all bets are off though because we're no longer bound by the rules of what is allowed and it's down to the old power of might making right.
    - friend_and_foe 2y ago
      "Withhold funding from the military" it's actually better (or worse) than that. The US doesn't have a standing army technically speaking, it cannot constitutionally. The post war military has been continuously reauthorized twice yearly since the end of world war 2. Congress can refuse to reauthorize continuation of it and the treasury can't do anything about it.
sirspacey 2y ago
Not quite. This is a great survey of the many issues & opinions on the topic that have been at play since the beginning of the Constitution: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C11-3/ALDE_00013589/#:~:text=Article%20I%2C%20Section%208%2C%20Clause,Land%20and%20Water%3B%20.%20.%20 https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C11-3....
autoexec 2y ago
> Armed forces killing people is a state of war. There hasn't been a single year of my life where US armed forces weren't killing someone somewhere in the world. The US military has been involved in armed conflicts around the globe in nearly every year since WWII but it hasn't declared many wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_mili...
imgabe 2y ago
Policing, or law enforcement, at the Federal level is also a part of the executive branch and under control of the President.
rtkwe 2y ago
The current standing precedent/law is the President only has to notify Congress within 48 hours of an action and must remove troops within 60 days if Congress has not approved an extension. Formal declarations of war are separate from short military actions legally. It's an extremely messy part of constitutional law precisely because of the split between the power to do and the power to authorize.

psunavy03 2y ago

> Armed forces killing people is a state of war. Real life is rarely this black and white.

clob 2y ago
Which is why we invented laws and legal systems to codify such things. Did you commit a crime, yes/no? Let's bring it to trial. The circumstances are messy in all real world instances, but the outcome is binary. Refusing to even put a president on trial is more black and white, because it's a clear "no, not illegal" without even discussion.
- davidmurdoch 2y ago
  Courts don't even decide yes/no. Maybe is an outcome. We don't know is also an outcome.
grotorea 2y ago
Doubly so since almost everyone stopped bothering to declare war after WW2.

nradov 2y ago

Huh? Federal law enforcement falls under the executive branch, not judicial. Have you even read the Constitution?

nostrademons 2y ago
Federal (and state, and local) law enforcement are not empowered to kill. Their job is to bring defendants to trial, where the judicial system determines innocence or guilt and then determines the sentence. If they were, the whole cop-killers, BLM, excessive use of force issue would not be an issue. The law would just say "Okay, a cop killed someone, that's their job, get over it." You can argue that the criminal justice system is too light on cops, but the fact that the criminal justice system is even involved means that killing people is not part of a cop's official job duties.
- mywittyname 2y ago
  Qualified immunity is used as a defense in a lot of these cases. Practically speaking, law enforcement does have broad authority to kill people. So long as that death falls under the training guidelines written by the department, then it's unlikely the officer in question will face any punishment. Now, killing a person might be seen as a violation of their civil rights, entitling their estate to compensation for the death. But that's a punishment for the state, not the individuals involved.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    That's muddling nouns a bit. Law enforcement individuals have extremely limited authority to kill people, exclusively(?) based on self-defense. The law enforcement system has the right to authorize the killing of people but is subject to judicial review. Ergo, if a law enforcement individual breaks guidelines and kills someone, they're charged. If a law enforcement individual follows guidelines and kills someone, then the system is charged. (E.g. state/federal lawsuits, consent decrees, etc)

OgsyedIE 2y ago

Art. 1 sec. 8 does not say that and no other part of the U.S. constitution mentions war.

BobaFloutist 2y ago

>If not, it's policing then it's under the judiciary authority, not the president. Wait, what? Executive branch pretty explicitly encompasses enforcement. The Justice Department is part of the Executive branch. Unless by "Judiciary authority" you meant the Justice Department, and not the Judiciary branch of the federal government, and by "not the president" you were very specifically discussing the semi-independence the Justice department has from the president.

janalsncm 2y ago

Congress has the power to declare war. But Congress has also passed the War Powers Act which states the President can use the military for short periods of time. Are you claiming the War Powers Act is unconstitutional?

InTheArena 2y ago
The War Powers Act is exactly the type of law that the Supreme Court has been going after. Bills that give power that was meant for one branch of government to a different branch, or abrogating that power.
- mywittyname 2y ago
  The problem with SCOTUS going after these laws is that they are a matter of practicality. If an attack is launched on the USA, the military and the President aren't going to sit back and let it happen, they will act. When the constitution was drafted, time delays necessitated that the military and the President act autonomously for the most part. Congress couldn't convene rapidly enough to expect them to have much say in all but the largest and most drawn out conflicts. The War Powers Act is codifying this implicit power. The framers never considered a situation where the President and Congress is watching a conflict play out across the world in real-time and making decisions. So it's literally impossible to say how they wanted this to be handled. That's why they gave Congress the powers to write laws.
  - secstate 2y ago
    And yet, now here we are in the 21st century, where it feels like we're on the opposite side of the time delay problem. Instead of the War Powers Act, what if we allowed congresspeople to use PEKs to vote by proxy in the case of an emergency (definition needed)? Surely that would be better than creating a all-but-in-title king out of the executive branch as concerns conflict?
    - rtkwe 2y ago
      The security issues around that are similar to the issues with electronic voting and have been covered exhaustively. You're creating the absolutely juiciest target for hacks and espionage. I would say they could meet by remote teleconference but that has issues now too with deep fakes getting better and better. On a similar note the communication time has vastly narrowed but so has the ability to perform attacks.

margalabargala 2y ago

> > The Constitution does not say that war must be declared for the armed forces to operate. > It does. Since the Constitution is a publicly available document, would you please point me to the spot where it says that? Thanks.

thurn 2y ago
There is a certain amount of deliberate ambiguity to Article I Section 8 -- take a look at e.g. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_817.asp https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_817.asp and you can see that the wording "The Congress shall have power to [...] declare war" was revised from "make war" in the earlier drafts. Madison clearly felt that Congressional authorization was on some level required to conduct a war, but that the Executive should be free to act quickly in self-defense, e.g. to repel an invasion.
- mywittyname 2y ago
  Like a lot of things, this seems to fall under the idea of "convention" and not law. This has been an ongoing problem in recent times. Practically speaking, Congress is a rubber stamp for matters of war. Theoretically, they can withhold funding from the military. But seeing as the Treasury Department falls under the President, it's unlikely they can actually do that.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    Legally though the power of the purse also lies with Congress. If we're throwing in extra constitutional actions all bets are off though because we're no longer bound by the rules of what is allowed and it's down to the old power of might making right.
  - friend_and_foe 2y ago
    "Withhold funding from the military" it's actually better (or worse) than that. The US doesn't have a standing army technically speaking, it cannot constitutionally. The post war military has been continuously reauthorized twice yearly since the end of world war 2. Congress can refuse to reauthorize continuation of it and the treasury can't do anything about it.

sirspacey 2y ago

Not quite. This is a great survey of the many issues & opinions on the topic that have been at play since the beginning of the Constitution: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C11-3/ALDE_00013589/#:~:text=Article%20I%2C%20Section%208%2C%20Clause,Land%20and%20Water%3B%20.%20.%20 https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C11-3....

autoexec 2y ago

> Armed forces killing people is a state of war. There hasn't been a single year of my life where US armed forces weren't killing someone somewhere in the world. The US military has been involved in armed conflicts around the globe in nearly every year since WWII but it hasn't declared many wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_mili...

imgabe 2y ago

Policing, or law enforcement, at the Federal level is also a part of the executive branch and under control of the President.

rtkwe 2y ago

The current standing precedent/law is the President only has to notify Congress within 48 hours of an action and must remove troops within 60 days if Congress has not approved an extension. Formal declarations of war are separate from short military actions legally. It's an extremely messy part of constitutional law precisely because of the split between the power to do and the power to authorize.