Pickering apparently felt that the U.S should go to war with France, rather than just skirmish with them. To the best of my knowledge, it was not a constitutional issue, but a policy one. The point is that there was not unanimity among the early politicians on war matters..
http://virtualpubliclibrary.com/postmasterhall/TIMOTHYPICKERING.NET/
http://www.studyworld.com/John_Adams_Critical_Review.htm
A rejection of the understanding of the Constitution accepted and acted on by both Federalist and Republican, the first three administrations and their congresses, is- frankly- bizarre.
I am not arguing that the Congress did not explicitly or tacitly agree to non-declared military actions. I am arguing that a military action is a military action and not a war. If we want special war-time laws and regulations in place, there should be a declared war. Those special laws seem to be warranted; so is a declaration of war.
Ah, there we can agree.
The congressional authorization for the use of military force has sufficed so far- it certainly allows the detaining of military combatants.
A DOW could have negated the need for the Patriot Act ( if combined with a susension of Habeus Corpus)- but then the administration would have even more extraordinary powers than we are worried about now. My view is much like I suspect Pickering's was- a DOW (a general war) gives the president more leeway to conduct a successful campaign.
Questioning the wisdom ( not the Constitutinality) of conducting limited- or declared for that matter general- war is always a commendable act of course.
BTW: the ruling in this case, which I linked to above, is very informative and is impressive whatever one's view.