Emergency Powers Essay

When the United States faces a crisis, the public often looks to the President to lead the nation with decisive, immediate action. However, even under extraordinary circumstances - such as the environment immediately following the September 11th terrorist attacks - the Constitution doesn’t expressly designate any war powers to the President. Even though many Constitutional experts have interpreted the structural ability of the executive branch to act faster than the legislative branch to signify that the Framers implied there to be emergency powers, the courts will only support the use of emergency powers when Congress has given its consent (Emergency Powers). As such, President Bush’s legal team asserted that the President’s war powers to fight in what came to be known as the “War on …show more content…
Standard interrogation procedures failed to produce what the Administration deemed to be “actionable intelligence;” consequently, the Administration ordered detainees being held in Guantanamo, the Abu Ghraib prison, and the Bagram Air Force Base be forced to endure degrading tactics, such as waterboarding and sleep deprivation, to coerce confessions and produce information. The 2002 Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memorandum, which defined “torture” very narrowly, was specifically cited by the Bush administration as the legal justification for their actions. (Justice Department Memos on Interrogation Techniques, 35). Although the Bush administration denied that Congress could institute limitations regarding the president’s torture policy, arguing in OLC memos that Congress cannot inhibit presidential actions as Commander in Chief, Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, states that the “Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces,” are to be made by