Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)

Q&A providing an overview of the legal framework governing shootdowns, including their status under both international and domestic U.S. law

Presidents have complied with the Act without serious objection, and there is essentially no scholarly or other commentary questioning the Act’s constitutionality.

Former Justice Department official provides steps Congress can take to prepare an oversight agenda now for the next congressional term.

What Congress, journalists, and the public should ask the Trump administration about its war in Iran.

The legal memo justifying its Venezuela operations provides insight into the administration's use-of-force decisions and the factual evidence undergirding them.

Experts who advised a president on use of force answer a full range of basic questions on the conditions under which action against Iran would be lawful, and what options Congress…

A troubling OLC memo claims civilians aiding “war-sustaining activities” can be lawfully targeted—an unsupported interpretation that weakens civilian safeguards.

This hypothetical legal review imagines what a senior judge advocate’s legal analysis would be if ordered to plan a U.S. military operation in Greenland without Denmark's consent.

The last year of unauthorized military interventions and the president’s threats should spur Congress to reassert its constitutional prerogatives over the use of force.

A decades-old Office of Legal Counsel memorandum claiming the President can disregard the UN Charter does not withstand serious scrutiny.

A hypothetical legal review examining the OLC's legal basis for having Judge Advocates serve as immigration judges.

The Trump administration's lethal strikes are the apotheosis of the last quarter century's often always secret and often unreviewable executive branch legal reasoning.