In this episode, I speak with Oona Hathaway, Professor of Law at Yale Law School and Professor of International Law and Area Studies at the Yale University MacMillan Center. We discuss the constitutional and legislative constraints on the executive war-making power, both in terms of the theoretical rationale for such constraints, and in terms of the constitutional and legislative form such constraints take in U.S. legal system. After discussing how and why such constraints in the U.S. have eroded over time, reaching a nadir in the Libyan intervention, Oona explains how the War Powers Resolution could be revised, in ways more consistent with international law, and how Congress could employ the courts, in order to re-establish Congressional authority over decisions to engage in armed conflict. We also discuss how such crises as the Coronavirus pandemic and climate change should cause us to re-think the scope and character of national security priorities and policy. We wrap up with a short discussion of the collaborative process involved in the writing of her co-authored work The Internationalists, and the ethical obligations in being a government lawyer. A fantastic foray into war powers and evolving perspectives on national security!
Materials:
– “How to Revive Congress’s War Powers,” Texas National Security Review (2019).
– “How to Recover a Role for Congress and the Courts in Decisions to Wage War,” Just Security, Jan. 10, 2020)(with Geoffrey Block).
– “COVID-19 Shows How the U.S. Got National Security Wrong,” Just Security, Apr. 7, 2020.
Reading Recommendations:
– Kate Manne, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women (2020).
– Samuel Moyn, Humane: How Americans Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, [working title – forthcoming, see this YouTube session for Sam’s discussion of the book!]
– Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall Trilogy (2009)