Declared War and American Victory: A Search for Effective Commitment
| Author | Slade Mendenhall |
| Position | Robert A. Levy Fellow, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, Arlington, VA and Department of Economics, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA |
| Pages | 261-322 |
This Article argues that the act of formally declaring war entails a measure of explicit
commitment on the part of American political actors that raises the cost of failure and
lacking such a device, are more likely to end on less decisive and less favorable terms
to the United States. On this basis, it explains the emergence of a decades-long trend
of protracted, unsuccessful, and indecisive military engagements by the United States
as having emerged from the erosion of a constitutionally established separation of
In defense of this theory, it uses case studies to assess the relevance of its predictions
and to weigh potential objections involving selection bias and imperfect information.
Declare War Clause, War Powers, Congressional Oversight, Public Choice,
Constitutional Economics
© 2020 Slade Mendenhall, published by Sciendo.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.
A. The Institution of Declared War ....................................................
...............................
9 Br. J. Am. Leg. Studies (2020)
A. Declared Wars ...............................................................................
i. The American Revolution ..............................................................
ii. The War of 1812 ............................................................................
iii. The Mexican-American War .........................................................
iv. The Spanish-American War ...........................................................
v. World War I ....................................................................................
vi. World War II ..................................................................................
B. Undeclared Wars ...........................................................................
i. Korean War .....................................................................................
ii. Vietnam War ...................................................................................
iii. Persian Gulf War ..........................................................................
iv. War in Afghanistan and Iraq War .................................................
262
See generally
Contracts as Reference Points
263
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