Legislative Investigations as War Power
Legislative Investigations as War Power
The Senate Munitions Investigation and Iran-Contra
This chapter returns to Congress to scrutinize another legislative discretionary power, that of investigations. While the investigatory power is normally conceived as a retrospective power of judgment, it construes investigations as both a war power and as a forward-looking tool for developing legislative war authority. The chapter compares the Munitions Investigation of 1934–36 with the Iran-Contra Investigation of 1989, arguing that the former developed far more constitutional authority for the legislature and war-making system than did the latter. The reasons may be surprising: counterintuitively, it is argued that Congress' insufficiently developed partisanship undermined the authority of its Iran-Contra Investigation as a challenge to presidential power.
Keywords: legislative investigation, Congress, investigatory power, Munitions Investigation, Iran-Contra Investigation, constitutional authority, partisanship
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