Person:

Goldsmith, Jack

This Essay identifies and analyzes the President's completion power: the President's authority to prescribe incidental details needed to carry into execution a legislative scheme, even in the absence of congressional authorization to complete that scheme. The Essay shows that the completion power is a common explanation for very different presidential powers, including the administration of a presidential statute, prosecutorial discretion, and the use of force abroad without express congressional authorization. Maintaining that the widespread use of the completion power is a partial vindication of Chief Justice Vinson's neglected dissent in the Youngstown Steel Seizure case, this Essay argues that the completion power sheds light on a structural symmetry that cuts across Articles I, II, and III of the Constitution--namely, that each of the three branches has some degree of inherent power to carry into execution the powers conferred upon it. The Essay also examines normative questions about the scope and limits of the power.

Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars anticipated many problems and developments in the laws of war, but it understandably did not anticipate how the Internet and associated computer and telecommunications revolutions would change war or the laws that govern it. This article seeks to assess, in general terms, the ways that the rise of cyber exploitation and cyber attacks challenge prevailing conceptions of the laws of war.

This essay replies to criticisms advanced at a conference on our book, The Limits of International Law. We engage the critics on several methodological issues, we attempt to correct misimpressions about some of our arguments, and we reiterate our distinctive empirical claims. We also argue that our critics have more in common with us, and less in common with traditional international law scholars, than they are willing to admit. This observation leads us to claim that a new kind of international law scholarship is emerging, one that relies more heavily on social scientific attitudes and methodologies than the international law scholarship that it is gradually displacing. This trend fills us with optimism about the field, but at the same time we predict, with some misgiving, that much future scholarship will be preoccupied with reconciling the traditional liberal internationalism of the international law academy and the new imperative to use rigorous social scientific methods.

This Essay identifies and analyzes the President's completion power: the President's authority to prescribe incidental details needed to carry into execution a legislative scheme, even in the absence of congressional authorization to complete that scheme. The Essay shows that the completion power is a common explanation for very different presidential powers, including the administration of a presidential statute, prosecutorial discretion, and the use of force abroad without express congressional authorization. Maintaining that the widespread use of the completion power is a partial vindication of Chief Justice Vinson's neglected dissent in the Youngstown Steel Seizure case, this Essay argues that the completion power sheds light on a structural symmetry that cuts across Articles I, II, and III of the Constitution--namely, that each of the three branches has some degree of inherent power to carry into execution the powers conferred upon it. The Essay also examines normative questions about the scope and limits of the power.