In 2017, when President Donald Trump ordered US air strikes against Syrian facilities following a chemical attack on civilians, Thomas Brackett Reed Professor of Government Andrew Rudalevige argued that the American action was not legally justified. “Bombing the Assad regime is certainly viscerally satisfying,” he wrote in The Washington Post political science blog The Monkey Cage. “But without legislative authorization, it is hard to think it’s legal.”

A year later, following more air strikes against the Damascus regime, the action remains illegal, says Rudalevige, again writing in The Monkey Cage. The reason, he explains, can be found in Article I of the Constitution, “which gives Congress, not the president, the power to declare war.”

Rudalevige’s latest Monkey Cage article was also cited by Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Bernstein. Read more.