![]() To be sure, the President is more than a mere general and admiral. Rather, they signed the proposals into law and, thereafter, sought to faithfully execute them. Indeed, early Presidents never objected to congressional bills that sought to regulate military operations pervasively, including wars. Nothing about the term “commander in chief” would have suggested such autonomy because previous chief commanders had lacked such independence. Crucially, the Clause does not grant any exclusive authority over peacetime operations or even the conduct of war. Rather than being a sui generis military potentate, the President is nothing more than a chief commander, or what Alexander Hamilton called the “first General and Admiral.” The Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy lacks a vast arsenal of military authority but instead possesses only the constrained powers of a general and admiral. ![]() ![]() By borrowing a familiar expression, the Constitution incorporated the modest, contemporary conception. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there were, at any one time, a multitude of British and American commanders in chief, and both assemblies and other military officials consistently directed these commanders, often in quite intrusive ways. In contrast to modern assumptions, the Article reveals that eighteenth-century commanders in chief enjoyed neither sole nor supreme authority over the military. Using eighteenth-century understandings as a yardstick, this Article topples the orthodox reading of the Clause and demarcates the Clause’s elusive frontiers. In particular, establishing the Clause’s limits is an acute and persistent problem. ![]() Yet, seemingly paradoxically, proponents of this stance cannot say where the Commander in Chief’s power begins and ends. Under such readings, the meaning of “commander in chief” is as obvious as it is unequivocal-it confers some measure of absolute and unchallengeable authority upon the President. By some lights, the Clause not only equips the President with exclusive control over military operations, but also conveys the powers to start wars, create military courts, direct and remove officers, and wield emergency wartime powers. The conventional wisdom is that the Commander-in-Chief Clause arms the President with a panoply of martial powers. ![]()
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