PROMINENT LEGISLATORS AND SCHOLARS
	TO DEBATE REPEALING WAR POWERS RESOLUTION

	Two senior members of the U.S. Congress will team up with
two of the nation's leading constitutional separation-of-powers
scholars in a Capitol Hill debate on repealing the 1973 War Powers
Resolution on Thursday, Feb. 29.  The debate will take place in Room
B-369 of the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C.,
between 5:30 and 7 p.m.  It is open to the public.
	House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-IL), who
has introduced legislation to repeal the controversial statute, will
be teamed with University of Virginia professor Robert F. Turner in
support of the proposition "Resolved:  That the War Powers
Resolution Should be Repealed."  Taking the negative side will be
former House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Lee Hamilton (D-IN)
and Louis Fisher, the senior specialist on separation of powers at
the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the Library of
Congress.  The moderator will be former Rep. John O. Marsh, who,
after serving four terms in the House of Representatives as a
Virginia Democrat, was Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Legislative Affairs, White House Counselor to President Ford and
Secretary of the Army.
	The debate will be sponsored by the Center for National
Security Law, a nonpartisan, nonprofit center for advanced
interdisciplinary research and scholarship about legal issues
affecting the national security process.  The center, which was
founded in 1981, is located at the U.Va. School of Law. 
	The War Powers Resolution was enacted over President Nixon's
veto in November, 1973, to preserve the constitutional power of
Congress "to declare war" and in response to a contention that
American presidents had committed U.S. troops to major hostilities
in Korea and Vietnam without proper legislative sanction.  All six
presidents who have held office since the resolution was enacted
have voiced constitutional objections to some of its provisions; and
there have been several heated debates over its implementation in
connection with the deployment of U.S. troops to places like
Grenada, Lebanon, Central America and the Persian Gulf.  A floor
amendment to repeal the 1973 statute, introduced last year by Rep.
Hyde, came within a few votes of passage; but Rep. Hamilton and
other legislators have sponsored legislation designed to strengthen
some provisions of the existing law.
	Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-IN), who has served more than 30 years
in the House of Representatives, is a former chairman of both the
House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Intelligence
Committees.  He also chaired the House Select Committee to
Investigate Covert Arms Transfers with Iran during the Iran-Contra
controversy.
	Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) currently chairs the House Judiciary
Committee and has also been a senior member of both the foreign
affairs and intelligence committees.  He played a prominent role on
the Iran-Contra committee.
	Louis Fisher has spent more than a quarter of a century on
the professional staff of the Congressional Research Service of the
Library of Congress and has taught at William & Mary School of Law,
Catholic University, Johns Hopkins and other universities.  He is
the author of several prize-winning books on constitutional law and
more than 100 articles; and his most recent book, "Presidential War
Power" (1995), has received high praise.
	Robert F. Turner has been on the faculty of U.Va. since 1987
and is a former three-term chairman of the American Bar
Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security.  He
served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for
Legislative Affairs in the mid 1980s.  Two of his many books
specifically focus upon the War Powers Resolution, and he has
testified before more than a dozen committees of Congress on this
and other issues.
	Fisher and professor Turner have recently engaged in a
printed debate on the pages of the American Journal of International
Law and the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy about whether
President Truman's June 1950 decision to commit U.S. troops in Korea
violated the Constitution.
### 
February 13, 1996
	For further information, contact Donna Ganoe at (804)
924-7441.