The Legality of the Use of Force Is Not a Political Question

America must be able to rely on its courts to help protect the rule of law during the Trump administration.  That is one reason I found this recent decision by a judge for the U.S. federal court in Washington, DC, so concerning.  In this case, Smith v. Obama, a U.S. army captain, who had recently been deployed in Kuwait, challenged the legality of the U.S. armed conflict against ISIS, claiming it was not authorized by Congress and, therefore, violated the War Powers Resolution, the Vietnam War-era law that requires congressional approval when president engages U.S. forces in hostilities beyond 60 days.  Whether Congress has sanctioned the conflict against ISIS, as required by the War Powers Resolution, is a legal question the court should have decided, regardless of what one thinks about the merits.  But instead the court relied on the political question doctrine as a ground for dismissing the suit without reaching the merits.  I elaborate in this post here at Just Security why this decision is problematic, especially as the country prepares for an administration that could engage in overly broad and aggressive uses of presidential war powers.