ABSTRACT
John Hart Ely held several important positions as a legal scholar: Richard A. Hausler Professor at the University of Miami Law School; dean of Stanford Law School; and Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard University. In War and Responsibility: Constitutional Lessons of Vietnam and Its Aftermath, Ely argued that the Vietnam War was constitutional insofar as Congress enacted the Tonkin Gulf Resolution and appropriated funds to support US military troops. However, the key lesson was that leading members of Congress willingly abdicated authority to check presidential aggrandizement of power because they did not want voters to hold them accountable for war-making acts, especially mistakes. Ely defended the Warren Court's reliance on the Carolene Products approach to judicial activism because he thought this approach, unlike the attempt to develop a right to privacy in Roe, rested on democratic values implicit within the Constitution rather than on judicially discovered rights.
