2001 AUMF? 2002 AUMF? New appropriations statute? Article 2??

Legal scholars are in a tizzy about the legal justification for the war on ISIS. Can’t the administration make up its mind? But Vermeule and I warned you years ago:

The main implication of this contrast is that crises in the administrative state tend to follow a similar pattern. In the first stage, there is an unanticipated event requiring immediate action. Executive and administrative officials will necessarily take responsibility for the front-line response; typically, when asked to cite their legal authority for doing so, they will either resort to vague claims of inherent power or will offer creative readings of old statutes.…

The overall picture of Congress’s role in emergency lawmaking, then, is as follows. Congress lacks motivation to act before the crisis, even if the crisis is in some sense predictable. Thus the initial administrative response will inevitably take place under old statutes of dubious relevance, or under vague emergency statutes that impose guidelines that the executive ignores and that Congress lacks the political will to enforce, or under claims of inherent executive authority. After the crisis is under way, the executive seeks a massive new delegation of authority and almost always obtains some or most of what it seeks, although with modifications of form and of degree. When Congress enacts such delegations, it is reacting to the crisis rather than anticipating it, and the consequence of delegation is just that the executive once again chooses the bulk of new policies for managing the crisis, but with clear statutory authority for doing so.

You could read Lawfare or Just Security every day. Or you could read The Executive Unbound just once.