Wagner Speaks on National Security, Constitutional Power, and International Law at Michigan State University Federalist Society

The auditorium at Michigan State University was filled with the rare kind of attention reserved for questions that sit at the intersection of law, power, and national survival. At the center of the stage, the Hon. William Wagner (Ret.)—Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Ben Franklin Fellow, and Chair of the Wagner Faith & Freedom Center at SAU—spoke with the measured calm of a jurist.

The debate concerned the President’s recent Venezuela operation, described by administration officials as a limited law enforcement action to apprehend indicted narco-terrorists. Wagner began by unpacking the constitutional complexity. Article I grants Congress the power to declare war, while Article II makes the President Commander in Chief. The key question, he explained, is classification: not every use of force abroad is “war” in the constitutional sense, yet executive power cannot expand simply by relabeling military action as law enforcement.

Wagner invoked Justice Jackson’s Youngstown framework, noting that presidential authority is strongest when supported by congressional statutes. Here, the Administration could argue it was executing laws Congress has enacted against narcotrafficking and transnational crime, acting within a long bipartisan history of limited uses of force abroad—Libya under Obama, Syria strikes under both Obama and Trump, and the Soleimani strike.

Turning to international law, Wagner was candid that the United States is bound by treaty. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits the use of force against another state’s territorial integrity, with narrow exceptions such as Security Council authorization or self-defense under Article 51. The Administration, he suggested, might argue that modern threats posed by transnational narco-terror networks require an evolving understanding of self-defense and necessity, especially given the staggering toll of fentanyl deaths in the United States.

Yet Wagner also acknowledged that many scholars contest such arguments, warning that expanding self-defense doctrines too far risks eroding the Charter’s core prohibition. Domestic executive orders and threat designations may strengthen the policy narrative, but they do not rewrite treaty obligations.

What made Wagner’s presentation compelling was its balance: the Administration’s position is not frivolous, but neither is it free from constitutional and international tension. A republic may defend itself, he concluded, but it must do so with fidelity to law—because security purchased at the expense of restraint ultimately endangers both.