Surprise!
(NYT) — President Obama had the constitutional power to lawfully launch military strikes in Libya without permission from Congress because he “could reasonably determine that such use of force was in the national interest,” the Justice Department concluded in an internal memorandum released on Thursday.
The 14-page document, addressed to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., was signed by Caroline D. Krass, the principal deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the executive branch about whether proposed actions are lawful.
The memorandum laid out in detail the thinking of the administration’s legal team about the scope of Mr. Obama’s power to initiate hostilities unilaterally under his authority as commander in chief — confirming, as The New York Times hasreported, that the administration’s argument centers on the idea that hostilities of limited nature, scope and duration do not rise to the level of a “war” that would trigger Congress’s powers under the Constitution.
Much of the memorandum recites the facts of the lead-up to the Libyan strikes and Mr. Obama’s statements about them, as well as precedents involving other unilateral military interventions by recent presidents of both parties — and quotations from previous Justice Department memorandums approving of such deployments.