The National War Powers Commission, co-directed by Interim College President Taylor Reveley and chaired by former Secretaries of State James Baker and Warren Christopher, announced yesterday that the War Powers Resolution of 1973 has failed to promote cooperation between the legislative and executive branches.
It recommended that Congress pass a new statute – the War Powers Consultation Act of 2009 – that would establish a clear process on decisions to go to war.
Reveley, who has written a book on war powers, told The Daily Press that the commission was not a political response to the Iraq War.
“It’s not focused on Iraq or Korea or Vietnam or any of that,” he said. “It’s about the need going forward to have a practical mechanism to get the two branches to work together. This is something that needed doing for a long, long time.”
Reveley worked with a variety of government and academic experts on war powers, including former Secretary of the Army John O. Marsh, Jr., former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Abner J. Mikva, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University Anne-Marie Slaughter, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and University of Virginia law Professor John C. Jeffries.
