Many believe that the power to start wars is the most important issue of constitutional war powers-and perhaps the most important issue of constitutional law altogether. Yet this fixation on the power to start wars obscures equally important questions. Who has the power to prepare for war, deter it, conduct it, decide its aims, or end it? Although many democracies wrestle with these constitutional questions, the United States stands apart in that no other written constitution has had to function over time across such dramatic transformations in national military power and radical swings in strategy for wielding it. To show the many ways that political leaders have adapted law-in war, in peace, and in the gray zones between-this book weaves together the stories of American constitutional war powers, military history, and grand strategy from the Revolutionary War to possible conflicts of the future. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
