This week’s nationwide speeches and programs honoring military veterans celebrate the courage of those who risked and sacrificed their lives on behalf of American ideals, principles and security. This grand federal holiday invites civic contemplation of the circumstances, events and decisions that led to the battlefield, and the sometimes difficult and complicated choices that men and women in uniform have been required to make when ordered by their superiors to carry out actions of doubtful legality.

The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Little v. Barreme (1804), which arose in the context of the Quasi-War — a limited war between the United States and France, from 1798-1800 — raised several important constitutional issues at the intersection of congressional and presidential power in ma

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