;) I was gonna say.... dat waz not meh! :)
If the framers wanted an expansive doctrine of the executive operating as commander in chief, left unchecked by other branches, they could have adopted the political models fashioned by John Locke and Sir William Blackstone.
In 1690, in his Second Treatise on Civil Government, Locke placed the “federative” power (what we call foreign policy) with the executive. The federative power consisted of “the power of war and peace, leagues and alliances, and all the transactions with all persons and communities without the commonwealth.”2
To Locke, this power was “always almost united” with the executive.3
To separate the executive and federative powers, he warned, would invite “disorder and ruin.”4
Similarly, in his Commentaries, Blackstone defined the king’s prerogative in sweeping terms to include the right to declare war, send and receive ambassadors, make war or peace, make treaties, issue letters of marque and reprisal (authorizing private citizens to undertake military actions), and raise and regulate fleets and armies.
Blackstone defined the king’s prerogative as “those rights and capacities which the king enjoys alone.”5
The power was therefore not subject to checks from any other political institution (or from the public).
Blackstone considered the king “the generalissimo, or the first in military command,” who had “the sole power of raising and regulating fleets and armies.”6 Whenever the king exercised his lawful prerogative he “is, and ought to be absolute; that is, so far absolute, that there is no legal authority that can either delay or resist him.”7
During the debates at the Philadelphia Convention, the framers vested in Congress many of Locke’s federative powers and Blackstone’s royal prerogatives. The power to go to war was not left to a single executive, but rather to collective decision making through parliamentary deliberations.
American democracy placed the sovereign power in the people and entrusted to them the temporary delegation of that power to elected senators, representatives, and presidents. Members of Congress take an oath of office to defend the Constitution, not the president.
Their primary allegiance is to the people and to the constitutional principles of checks and balances and separation of power. The breadth of congressional power is evident simply by looking at the text of the Constitution and comparing Article I to Article II.
Reading the text underscores the degree to which the framers wholly repudiated the models of Locke and Blackstone.
Not a single one of Blackstone’s prerogatives is granted to the president. They are either assigned entirely to Congress (declare war, issue letters of marque and reprisal, raise and regulate fleets and armies)8 or shared between the Senate and the president (appointing ambassadors and making treaties).9
The rejection of the British and monarchical models could not have been more sweeping.