For decades, war powers in Washington flowed away from Congress and toward the presidency. The framers of the Constitution wanted to vest the legislature with the power to commence conflict. The executive, they thought, was not “safely to be trusted with it,” and congressional lethargy could be made a virtue for “clogging rather than facilitating war [and instead] facilitating peace.” But Washington moved steadily away from that design, particularly in the last half-century. Now, if it bothers to involve itself in a debate over military intervention at all, Congress typically passes open-ended authorizations for the use of military force, and the president takes it from there — and takes it wherever he likes.

But two congressional hearings this week and recent, encouraging noises from the Biden White House suggest war powers reform might finally be afoot. That’s good news, not only in the procedural sense of a shift toward a more consistent rule of law, but also because it offers an important opportunity to restrain reckless habits of U.S. foreign policy.