Congress and Control of the Military
Session 7 of the Congressional Study Group
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Editor's Note:
The following is a summary of the seventh session of the Congressional Study Group on Foreign Relations and National Security, a program for congressional staff focused on critically engaging the legal and policy factors that define the role that Congress plays in various aspects of U.S. foreign relations and national security policy.
On Sept. 11, 2020, the Congressional Study Group on Foreign Relations and National Security convened online to discuss the issue of to what extent Congress is able to exercise control over the military. In recent years, Congress has enacted statutes that seek to set limits on when the president may remove deployments of U.S. soldiers, including from long standing posts in Germany and South Korea. Are such laws valid exercises of Congress’s own constitutional authority over the funding of and establishment of rules for the military? Or do they infringe on the president’s own constitutional authority as commander in chief?
To discuss these questions, the study group was joined by two outside experts: Professor
Zachary Price of the University of California, Hastings College of Law; and Professor
Ashley Deeks of the University of Virginia School of Law, who also previously served as the Assistant Legal Adviser for Political-Military Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. Prior to the session, they circulated several suggested pieces of background reading, including:
https://www.brookings.edu/research/congress-and-control-of-the-military/
