When: Thursday September 21: 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Where: The Indiana Historical Society 450 West Ohio St. Indianapolis 46202
John Clark chats with Andy Jacobs. Andy is a retired United States Congressman who served fifteen terms representing the 10th District of Indiana. While in office, Jacobs helped write the 1965 Voting Rights Act, led the House of Representatives' all-night debate on the Vietnam War in 1969, and served on the Ways and Means Committee. Jacobs received a B.A. and a J.D. from Indiana University. Prior to serving in Washington, Andy worked as a Marion County police officer, served as a Marine in the Korean War, and was elected to the Indiana General Assembly in 1958. His most recent book is 1600 Killers: A Wake-Up Call for Congress (New Iraq Edition), published in 2006. For a very good short bio of Andy, check out Nuvo's Cultural Visions Lifetime Achievement Award.
Of all of the fun events scheduled for My Daily Constitution, this one may be the most fun of all. IndyBuzz's take on the topic (which may be a bit gaudier than the official desc
ription):The Constitution gives to Congress the exclusive right to declare war,
while designating the President commander-in-chief of the military. How
realistic is this division of power? In the country's history, Congress has
declared war just five times (most recently in World War II), while the
President has deployed troops outside the US more than 200 times. And can we
afford to be constrained by a Constitution written two centuries ago, before
globalization connected caves in Afghanistan to skyscrapers in New York, before
our enemies dreamt of holy suicide-murder, before weapons could rain down mass
destruction?
I would like to treat this event as a debate with Andy Jacobs. But who can debate Andy Jacobs, a true force of nature ... an eloquent, funny, wise, witty force of nature. As I tell students, even if every one of Andy's stories about his 30 years in Congress were false, they would be worth paying to hear ... and even better, they are all true! So this won't be a debate, I have no desire to look like an ignoramus in front of hundreds of people. It's a chance to have a deep conversation with a man I admire enormously.
But IndyBuzz does have questions it keeps pondering. The dark and terrible problems that face the world in the 21st century -- disease, poverty, increasingly intractible social conflicts waged with increasingly deadly weapons, you know the list -- may require strong leadership by a powerful United States to be solved. If solving these problems is incompatible with this Constitution, why should following the Constitution trump the solutions? I think I know the answer, but I may get another when I have the coolest gig in policy-wonkdom: chatting with Andy Jacobs about the Constitution.
For more information ... When the title of an event has the assigned reading in it -- "War Powers Clause (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11)" -- you know your assigned reading. You can get a free copy of the Constitution at libraries and bookstores across the city. You can get a nice background to the legal thinking about Clause 11 (and Clauses 12, 13, and 14, which also pertain to war and foreign policy) from FindLaw.
The discussion will be shaped by the 1973 "War Power Resolution," which Congress intended to reclaim powers they had seen eroding. Weeks after 9/11, the Congressional Research Service prepared an excellent overview of the first 28 years of the War Powers Resolution.
One's first thought after hearing Andy Jacobs often is: "I gotta read more!" Hear are some suggestions of books you m
ight read after this event.- Of course Andy Jacobs, The 1600 Killers: A Wake-up Call for Congress (Iraq Edition).
- John Hart Ely's War and Responsibility is a classic.
- The Clinton Wars: The Constitution, Congress, and War Powers, by Ryan C. Hendrickson, is an excellent reminder that this tension over the power to wage war raged between Congress and the White House before the current president launched his wars.
- You can get many sides of the issue in the recent collection: The Constitution in Wartime: Beyond Alarmism and Complacency. The essays assembled are moderate in tone, deeply learned, and probably reflect a dominant view among legal scholars: the Constitution is almost always stressed in times of war, and during this "Long War" on terrorism it is stressed more than ever before.
- None of the scholars in The Constitution in Wartime provides a very convinced explanation of the Bush Administration's perspective on these constitutional issues. For these you need to read John Yoo's The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11. Yoo was the lawyer in the Justice Administration who drafted many of the memos justifying the use of torture, Guantanamo detentions, military trials, NSA spying, etc. So influential was he that Jeff Rosen of the NY Times refers to "The Yoo Presidency." Much of his work for the Administration is still classified, but this book lays out his basic arguments. As you might imagine, VERY controversial. For a flavor of the reviews, read Cass Sunstein, Steve Holmes, and a more favorable review from Andrew McCarthy. (Note that Yoo is coming to Indy March 2, courtesy of the Economic Club.)
About the venue: The Indiana Historical Society first formed in 1830 with such aims as collecting materials that relate to the “natural, civil, and political history of Indiana” and the “promotion of useful knowledge.” After many years of few meetings and low membership, the IHS was reorganized in 1886. Since then, it has met annually and now publishes bulletins, books, newsletters, and other materials, including one Pulitzer Prize-winning book published in 1950. The IHS’s William Henry Smith Memorial Library, established in 1922, houses one of the world’s largest collections of Indiana and Old Northwest history-related material that includes more than 1.6 million photographs and 7,400 manuscript collections.
If you like this event ... Check out the Constitutional Cafés with Claudia Porretti and Ed DeLaney.
To return to the IndyBuzz schedule of My Daily Constitution events, click here.
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