Anyone Still Arguing Trump's Iran War Isn't Illegal Will Soon Be Out of Excuses: Legal Scholar

In late February, President Donald Trump launched a war of choice with Iran that many legal scholars have called illegal for numerous reasons, including that the president received no authorization from Congress or the United Nations Security Council before carrying out the attack, and that the invasion was not started in self-defense.

Defenders of the war have nevertheless claimed that Trump's decision to attack Iran is covered by the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which allows the president to deploy military forces for up to 60 days so long as he provides the US Congress with notification within 48 hours of launching strikes.

With the Iran war set to surpass the 60-day threshold by the end of this week, legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, argued in an editorial published by The New York Times on Monday that time is about to run out for defenders of the deeply unpopular war.

The US attacks will “clearly be illegal” should they continue without any congressional approval, said Chemerinsky.

Chemerinsky predicted that Trump and Republicans in Congress will shrug off this deadline, even though the War Powers Resolution "doesn't come with a check box for opting out."

This would then put the onus on courts to declare the war illegal and demand its end, Chemerinsky continued, although he acknowledged that the chances of a court enforcing the War Powers Resolution were slim, given a long history of courts dismissing claims brought under the 1973 law.

Even so, he encouraged opponents of the war to file lawsuits aimed at ending the conflict, given that the alternative is to simply grant the president unchecked powers to launch wars of choice.

"The courts should simply hold that the War Powers Resolution requires the president to end our involvement in the war with Iran unless and until Congress authorizes it," Chemerinsky concluded. "This shouldn’t be—and isn't—different than any other injunction on any administration to comply with the law. Mr. Trump might disregard such an order. But that isn’t a reason for the federal judiciary to abandon its duty to enforce the law."

Congressional Democrats have repeatedly forced votes on war powers resolutions that would end the Iran War, but each time have fallen short of the votes needed in the Republican-controlled Congress.

An April 16 war powers resolution in the US House of Representatives came one vote short of passing, with Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) joining nearly all Republicans in voting against it.

Chemerinsky pointed to the unwillingness of Congress to take responsibility for war powers as a reason for courts to intervene, and warned of dire consequences should they fail to declare the war illegal.

"In the face of congressional inaction, and without judicial enforcement, there are realistically no checks on the president’s ability to unilaterally wage war," wrote Chemerinsky. "If the federal judiciary, up to and including the Supreme Court, won’t uphold its responsibility here, it will nullify our Constitution’s design that two branches of government should be involved when our country goes to war."