Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine certain subjective factors which may have influenced the Framers' efforts concerning the role of the President in decisions to use force. This paper looks at historical experiences and the ideas of the most influential political commentators of the eighteenth century in order to provide an intellectual background to the Constitutional Convention, which has not been adequately covered in the literature concerning presidential war powers. ;I have examined British constitutional development in order to provide a sense of the sources of the prejudices and hopes the Framers held in regard to executive war powers. I also survey the Radical Whig and Liberal schools of political philosophy in order to explain the sources of certain ideas concerning the war power contained in the Constitution as well as explain the common vocabulary of the period concerning the place of the executive in decisions to go to war. Finally I explore colonial and revolutionary history in order to show that the Framers enjoyed a wealth of knowledge concerning complex relationship of executive war powers, national security and the preservation of liberty in a republican state