“The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”
Thus spoke Barack Obama, former professor of constitutional law, in an interview granted in 2007 to the Boston Globe. As can be seen in this article* in the New York Times, this statement came up in the wake of the president’s decision to give the green light on “Operation Odyssey Dawn.”
Legislators from both parties say that Obama has overstepped his constitutional powers in authorizing military action without the permission of Congress. Similar criticisms were made after the U.S. intervention in Somalia under George Bush Sr. in 1992 and in Kosovo under Bill Clinton in 1999.
The Constitution provides that “Congress shall have the power to … declare war …” without defining more precisely the form that such a statement should take.
White House officials argued that the operation in Libya does not require such permission because of its limited nature, both in the duration and the target. They also argued that Obama’s statement to the Boston Globe in 2007 was for a ground invasion, such as that by the United States in Iraq in 2003.
*Editor’s note: The article mentioned can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/africa/22powers.html?_r=1
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