Lincoln and Bush

[Sanford Levinson]

I'm also preparing to teach the constitutional issues surrounding secession
and war in 1861.  I confess that I find Judah Benjamin's constitutional
arguments (which can be found in Brest et al. at pp. 215ff easily as
persuasive as Lincoln's, which suggests the possibility that Lincoln
behaved unconstitutionally in suppressing secession.  As I have asked
elsewhere about the Emancipation Proclamation, which might well be deemed
unconstitutional if one interprets the Steel Seizure Case to its maximum
dimension, does anyone really care about Lincoln's constitutional
fidelity?  Moving to the present, is it really so important for Mark (and
other opponents of the war) that Congress has (by stipulation) passed an
"unconstitutional" resolution and that Bush (by stipulation) is about to
violate a bunch of international legal norms, or, rather, is the argument
political to the core?  I.e., shouldn't someone who shares the Bush
administration's view of Iraq as a "clear and present danger" to the US
support his actions, whether or not they are constitutionally justified?

sandy