Tuesday, September 10, 2013

The Pacificus-Helvidius Debate

Despite the fact that James Madison and Alexander Hamilton worked together on both the drafting of the Constitution and the campaign to get it ratified, they soon started to disagree with each other over aspects of the document - including the relative powers of the legislative and executive branches over foreign policy making, including war making powers.

Like the Federalist Papers, this argument was carried out in dueling essays, this time Madison and Hamilton were on opposing sides of the issue.

They were called the Pacificus-Helvidius Debates.

Here's a description of the debates from the Liberty Fund:

The Pacificus-Helvidius Debates of 1793–1794 matched Hamilton and Madison in the first chapter of an enduring discussion about the proper roles of executive and legislative branches in the conduct of American foreign policy. Ignited by President Washington’s Neutrality Proclamation of 1793, which annulled the eleventh article of America’s Treaty with France of 1778, the debate addressed whether Washington had the authority to declare America neutral, despite an early alliance treaty with France. Hamilton argued that Washington’s actions were constitutional and that friction between the two branches was an unavoidable, but not harmful, consequence of the separation of powers. Madison countered that Washington’s proclamation would introduce “new principles and new constructions” into the Constitution and contended that “the power to declare war and make treaties can never fall within the definition of executive powers.” In the introduction, Morton Frisch asserts that the debate between Hamilton and Madison helped to clarify “certain constitutional principles that we now associate with executive power generally” such as that foreign policy is essentially an executive function. Yet it is the open-ended character of our Constitution that has continued to allow different interpretations of the limits of the powers of government, a debate that continues to this day. Frisch writes in the introduction, “The open-ended character of some of the constitutional provisions afforded opportunities for extending the powers of government beyond their specified limits. Although not given prior sanction by the Constitutional Convention, such additions served to provide a more complete definition of powers without actually changing the ends of government.”

Click here for more on the debates. I find it interesting - and instructive - that we've been arguing about the nature of war making powers as long as we have.