New Books In National Security

Sarah Burns’ new book The Politics of War Powers: The Theory and History of Presidential Unilateralism (University Press of Kansas, 2020) pulls together distinct threads in analyzing the theoretical framing of presidential power in the American constitutional system and then tracing that power through forty-five presidents. Burns begins by assessing Locke’s impact on the constitutional design of the presidency and then turning her attention to the more substantial contributions made by Montesquieu, since Montesquieu had an equally sizeable impact on the Founders and their thinking about this office. There were great tensions at the time of the Founding about the powers that the president has in pursuing war and military engagements. The Politics of War Powers pays close attention to the distinctions made in the Constitution between the role of the legislature in declaring war, and the role of the president in prosecuting war. This is the foundation for Burns’ analysis of presidential implementation of these p