Just Security is pleased to hold a symposium of leading experts engaging with Professor Harold Hongju Koh’s recently-released The National Security Constitution in the 21st Century. The book draws Koh’s decades of work in national security law, including as State Department Legal Adviser, to place recent presidents’ exercise of foreign affairs-related power in historical and constitutional context. Looking across administrations, Koh examines how leaders of both parties have embraced an increasingly expansive view of presidential power and offers a set of recommendations for restoring the balance of powers in foreign affairs decision-making.
In the first entry in this symposium, America’s Overlooked National Security Threat, published after the last presidential debate in September, Koh explained a key thesis of the book, writing that the expanding executive poses a national security challenge that goes beyond political parties and offering recommendations applicable regardless of the outcome of the Nov. 5 election.
Today, the symposium continues with Professor Rebecca Ingber writing on a core theme underlying many of the more specific proposals in Koh’s book–the “background reality” that “international law is becoming a third rail in American politics today.” Over the next several weeks, expert authors will engage with themes in Koh’s book including balance of powers among the political branches and oversight, a range of possible approaches to restraints on international agreement withdrawal, war powers reform, information control, and more. Across the symposium, authors will respond both to the big-picture ideas with which the book grapples and a number of Koh’s specific policy proposals (explored in detail in Chapters 10 and 11 of the book), with articles updated here as they are published:
Harold Hongju Koh, America’s Overlooked National Security Threat (Sep. 11, 2024)
Rebecca Ingber, Confronting the War on International Law in the United States (Oct. 24, 2024)
Ashley Deeks and Kristen Eichensehr, Frictionless Government and the National Security Constitution (Oct. 28, 2024)
Sean Murphy and Edward Swaine, Presidential Power to Exit Treaties: Reflecting on the Mirror Principle (Nov. 1, 2024)
Catherine Amirfar and Ashika Singh, Withdrawal from International Agreements: Toward a “Tailored Out” (Nov. 1, 2024)