{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.01985208252238225, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0011677695601401323, 'mean_word_length': 5.090047393364929, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
A Review of “Emergency Presidential Power: From the Drafting of the Constitution to the War on Terror“

claims to unilateral powers will persist, he believes, unless both branches agree to craft new institutional arrangements. Professor Griffin’s analysis of the historical development of presidential war powers should be familiar to those scholars who regard many of the powers of the modern executive as extra-constitutional. The strength of the book lies in the formidable array of materials he brings together, along with his use of the memoranda and legal opinions of officials in the executive branch to develop his arguments. In addition, he identifies parallels across very different administrations, which helps to dispel widespread beliefs that failed U.S. foreign policies have been the handiwork of bad individuals with sinister motives operating from the White House. In this respect, Professor Griffin has been successful in his efforts to change the discourse about congressional and presidential war powers, but only up to a point. The author’s focus on long wars quite naturally highlights the role of the president, but neglects the equally important question of how Congress perpetuates the dysfunction of the new constitutional order. He refers to problems in Congress throughout the book and spends a few pages on the need for congressional reform in his concluding chapter. He thus seems to recognize that a meaningful cycle of accountability starts and ends with oversight by the legislative branch, from the initial decision to engage in war, to review of its prosecution, to evaluation at its conclusion. However, he concedes that “it has been hard for presidents to visualize what useful role Congress can play.... However odd it may seem to congressionalists ... we must be able to articulate a place for Congress that at least in principle could make sense to presidents” (255). If lawmakers are the major obstacle to greater accountability, then more public discussion before each specific conflict is unlikely to protect the nation from future policy debacles. Standing in the way of reform, however, is the mismatch of the two institutions’ motivations. As Terry Moe and William Howell have observed, Congress is an assemblage of individual actors plagued by collective action problems and is severely disadvantaged when confronting the White House’s unified resolve. To truly alter the debate between congressionalists and presidentialists, Griffin needs a more robust vision of the legislature in the new constitutional order he seeks.