David Skaggs: “the one thing that each of us raises our hand and swears to at the beginning of each Congress is to uphold and defend…”

“the one thing that each of us raises our hand and swears to at the beginning of each Congress is to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. Yet, I would speculate that it is a document that almost none of us fully understand in all its complexity, and subtlety and history. In order to try to remedy our need for further understanding and education in constitutional issues, the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Leach] and I are beginning what we are calling the constitutional forum. The forum will sponsor a series of luncheon meetings for Members to discuss in depth, and we hope seriously, constitutional issues facing this body. The first of these sessions will be this coming Tuesday, and we will feature a discussion of the war powers issue and the constitutional tension between executive and legislative authority over the use of U.S. military power. We will feature the newly named counsel to the President, Lloyd Cutler, and Harold Koh, a constitutional scholar from Yale Law School, to discuss that issue. We invite all of our colleagues to join us for what we hope will be a very useful series of discussions of constitutional matters.”