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.
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.
If the president actually has the authority to send troops into combat without a declaration of war, then Congress can’t take it away from him, just like Congress can’t make it illegal to veto bills.
The War Powers Act doesn’t really set any punishment for the president if he ignores it. It effectively says that if the president does certain things (consult with Congress, follow certain timelines, issue reports) then Congress won’t complain. Presidents have generally followed those procedures without admitting that’s what they’re doing (they issue reports “consistent with” the Act, but never admit the report was required by the Act). But if a president completely ignores those requirements, Congress has to figure out what to do about it; which is exactly what would happen if the Act didn’t exist.
> It does.
Since the Constitution is a publicly available document, would you please point me to the spot where it says that? Thanks.
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.
Real life is rarely this black and white.
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.
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_Uni...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_mili...
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.
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.
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.
