The Desirability of Politics

Abstract

In 1940, with FDR at the height of his personal and political powers and campaigning for four more years as Commander in Chief, Edwin S. Corwin - perhaps concerned about an imperial presidency - asked: "Where does the Constitution lodge the power to determine the foreign relations of the United States[?]" As a matter of political practicality at the time, it would soon become obvious who was determining U.S. foreign relations. But the practicalities of American politics are subject to certain ebbs and flows, and so too is presidential political power to influence foreign affairs. At the same time, "law has relatively little to add in resolving most disputes over the content and conduct of United States foreign policy." Which makes it all the more important to have a clear answer to Corwin's constitutional question. So begins H. Jefferson Powell's The President's Authority over Foreign Affairs (Carolina Academic Press 2002). Powell assesses the words and deeds of an impressive gallery of leading authorities on the content and conduct of American foreign affairs - Washington, Hamilton, Adams, Marshall, Jay, Madison, Jefferson, as well as more recent practitioners and scholars - and concludes that under the Constitution: "the president determines, at least as an initial matter, what the foreign policy of the United States is to be." The balance of Powell's book is devoted to an interpretation of the Constitution that comports with that conclusion. What follows below is a short summary of Powell's views - drawn from his book and slightly revised for the Green Bag - on the consequences of his reading of history and the Constitution, and his taxonomy of the resulting foreign affairs powers of the president.

Keywords: presidential authority, foreign affairs, Constitution