Early Congressional Resistance to Unilateral Presidential Military Action

• In Event: The Use of Unilateral Powers

Abstract

This paper examines early instances of congressional criticism of presidential unilateralism in military action. Specifically, it analyzes the first 125 years of such controversies, including presidential assertions of unilateral authority in war and related matters and subsequent congressional push-back against them, from George Washington into Woodrow Wilson’s presidency.
The intended scholarly contributions of this project are two-fold. First, the paper will add to the growing literature on the political complexity of presidential unilateralism, in which seemingly unilateral presidential actions can actually involve not just the president but also the bureaucracy and even Congress (e.g., Dickenson 2005 and 2016, Rudalevige 2012 and 2021). Second, it will enhance awareness of the interbranch contestation over the war power before World War I (e.g., Irons 2005, Howell 2011, Fisher 2013, Zeisberg 2013, Burns 2019, Beschloss 2019, Haviland 2019).
Despite the president’s clear constitutional authority as Commander in chief, it is Congress’s prerogative to declare war and to determine the military’s structure, funding, and personnel. As a result of this division, the institutional struggle to control military action has generated significant controversies over the years. But while students of interbranch relations are familiar with episodes of institutional struggle over American military actions over the past century or so (from Woodrow Wilson’s clash with Congress over the League of Nations to twenty-first century controversies over presidentially initiated actions against Al Queda, ISIL, and Houthi forces), they tend to be less familiar with the lengthy and significant early history of such struggles, even though those older struggles informed and influenced the politics and jurisprudence of more recent struggles.
This paper seeks to partially remedy that oversight by examining significant early episodes in which Congress tried (albeit with mixed success) to resist or restrict executive unilateralism in military affairs. These include controversies over George Washington’s Neutrality Proclamation of 1793, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and the Barbery Wars of 1801-1815, James Madison and enforcement of commercial bans on trade with England in 1809-1814, James Madison and the War of 1812, James Polk and the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, and William McKinley and the Spanish-American War of 1898. Congressional complaints about these actions came from prominent members like Senator Daniel Webster, (former President) Representative John Quincy Adams, and (future President) Representative Abraham Lincoln among others, and they were strikingly similar to congressional complaints of presidential unilateralism articulated during the Vietnam War and the War on Terror.
The paper should be of interest to scholars of the Presidency, Congress, American political development, and public law.

Author

• Graham G. Dodds, Concordia University