Well, now it's time for our daily Bloomberg lobbrare for exploring legal issues in the news, and today Bloomberg lahst Greg Stewart discuss his President Trump's constitutional powers and taking military action against North Korea, and whether he would need congressional approval for a large scale attack overseas. She speaks with Elias Souman, a professor at the George Mason University and an Inscalia law school. Let me just start with
the core constitutional question. Could Donald Trump legally order a preemptive attack on North Korea without getting congressional authorization? I think not? In west perhaps the North Korean attack was imminent because the Constitution makes it clear that only Congress
has the power to authorize the initiation of a war. However, it's possible that despite its unconstitutionality, Trump could potentially get away with starting a war without congressional authorization because adhering to that constitutional principle has been spotty in recent years in footing under President Obama. Let's let's get into some of that history in a moment. If it were a smaller scale strike, is that something that that Trump could
could do without going to Congress first? I think there's room for legitimate debate over that. Some people would argue, and I tend to agree with this, that there might be small scale military actions that fall short of a war, and then perhaps the president could undertake them on their own, maybe his strike on Syria a few months ago as
an example of this. Others, however, argued that any attack kind of foreign power, even a very small one, qualifies as an act of war, and if it's done to start a conflict rather than in reaction to an enemy attack or two like, then uh, it's a war and Congress have to authorize it. One thing North Korea has threatened is this idea of launching missiles that would land near Guam. Would that be enough to allow the president to respond without having to get something some thursdation from Congress.
It's an interesting case, as would almost steady legal principle, They're going to be borderline situations which may be hard to categorize. I would very tentatively say that if the strike on Guam looked like it was likely intended to actually hit Guam, then that's an act of war and Trump currently could respond to any president could respond if, on the other hand, it seems pretty clear that all North Korea is doing is landing missiles in international waters.
That's provocative and I advised act, but in itself wouldn't count as a war because all sorts of governments have war games and military exercises and international waters all the time. That's I yes, so Men, a professor at the George Mason University ended in Scalia Law School, speaking with Bloomberg Law hose Greg Store. You can listen to Bloomberg Law weekdays at one pm all street time here on Bloomberg Radio,
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