November 27th, 2018 Dear Majority Leader McConnell and Minority Leader Schumer: The United Nations warned in October of the “clear and present danger of an imminent and great big famine engulfing Yemen,” threatening half of the country’s people—14 million Yemenis— with death by starvation within months. Averting the largest famine to be witnessed in at least a century requires ending the U.S.-Saudi war against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Above all, concluded UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen Lise Grande, “the fighting has to stop.” Despite UN calls for a ceasefire, the Saudi-led coalition’s offensive on Yemen’s vital port city of Hodeidah has led to intense fighting and airstrikes in recent days, wounding hundreds, endangering health facilities, and threatening the distribution of food and fuel throughout the country. The Trump Administration’s November 9th announcement suspending U.S. midair refueling for Saudi coalition airstrikes has not proved sufficient in compelling the coalition to end hostilities, and that U.S. decision could be reversed at any time. U.S. logistical support, targeting assistance, and intelligence sharing for Saudi coalition airstrikes continues, as does U.S. Special Forces’ participation in anti-Houthi operations. In addition, the President’s November 20th declaration absolving Saudi leadership of its conduct in Yemen and the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi indicates that the Trump Administration will not use its leverage to rapidly bring the conflict to an end. President Trump reaffirmed that “the United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia,” a “great ally.” Immediate Congressional action is therefore imperative. We write to urge you to do everything in your power to assure the passage of Senate Joint Resolution 54, introduced by Senators Sanders (I-VT), Lee (R-UT), and Murphy (D-CT), to end all unauthorized U.S. military participation in the Saudi-led war. By directing the President to halt all offensive activities alongside Saudi Arabia against the Houthis unless such actions are first approved by Congress, the passage of S.J.Res. 54 would spell the likely end to the broader conflict. Negotiations could then turn to reviving Yemen’s economy and fully reopening the country—“whose skies and seas are under a strict military blockade” by the Saudi regime—to food, fuel and medicine to end the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. In 2016, noting the thousands of Yemeni civilians killed in Saudi airstrikes hitting markets, homes, hospitals, factories and ports, The New York Times observed that the U.S.-supported bombing campaign had already created “a humanitarian disaster.” The Times reported that the White House had dedicated “two days of discussions” in 2015 to weighing U.S. participation in Saudi-led hostilities, “but there was little real debate. Among other reasons, the White House needed to placate the Saudis as the administration completed a nuclear deal with Iran,” which “eclipsed concerns among many of the president’s advisers that the Saudi-led offensive would be long, bloody and indecisive. Mr. Obama soon gave his approval for the Pentagon to support the impending military campaign.” U.S. military operations expanded to include Green Berets who secretly arrived on the Saudi-Yemeni border to locate and destroy missiles caches of Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Yet Congress enacted the War Powers Resolution of 1973, overriding President Nixon’s veto, to avert precisely such developments. In section 2(c) of that law, Congress enshrined the requirement for specific statutory authorization when introducing U.S. forces into imminent hostilities, defined by section 8(c) to include U.S. personnel assigned to “command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany” foreign military forces imminently engaged in hostilities. Congress expressly delineated this broad set of actions in order “to prevent secret, unauthorized military support activities and to prevent a repetition of many of the most controversial and regrettable actions in Indochina,” including the deployment of U.S. “advisers” who in fact were secretly engaged in war “without Congressional authorization.” For the purposes of legislative oversight, Congress also arrived at the term “hostilities” advisedly in developing the War Powers Resolution, substituting the term for “armed conflict” during the drafting process because “hostilities” were considered “broader in scope,” encompassing “a state of confrontation in which no shots have been fired but where there is a clear and present danger of armed conflict.” The more-expansive “imminent hostilities,” Congress maintained, applied to any situation “in which there is a clear potential either for such a state of confrontation or for actual armed conflict.” Congress intended for the War Powers Resolution to structure the exercise of its sole authority over the offensive use of force pursuant to Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. Chief framer James Madison urged for “rigid adherence to the simple, the received and the fundamental doctrine of the constitution, that the power to declare war including the power of judging of the causes of war is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature.” Since 2015, the Executive Branch has never sought specific statutory authorization required by the War Powers Resolution for military participation alongside Saudi Arabia against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Nor has it provided to Congress any legal justification for its ongoing hostilities. The Houthis pose no direct threat to the United States, nor are they covered under any authorization for use of military force. The Houthi rebels are adversaries of Al Qaeda in Yemen and similar terrorist groups; in fact, the “Houthis have eradicated Al Qaeda from their areas” in Yemen, according to the Times. Thirty policymakers who served in the Obama Administration, including National Security Advisor Susan Rice and CIA Director John Brennan, recently acknowledged the catastrophic consequences of U.S. involvement in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and now call on the United States to “end participation in or any form of support for this conflict.” We ask that you lead the Congress in fulfilling its humanitarian imperative and constitutional duty to pass S.J.Res. 54 and swiftly end the Saudi-led war in Yemen so that millions may yet live. Sincerely, [Affiliations listed for identification purposes only and do not imply institutional endorsement] Bruce Ackerman Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science Yale University Laurence H. Tribe Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law Harvard University Hon. Barbara K. Bodine U.S. Ambassador to Yemen, 1997-2001 Director, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University Stephen A. Seche U.S. Ambassador to Yemen, 2007-2010 Bruce Riedel Former Central Intelligence Agency analyst, White House senior advisor Author, Kings and Presidents: Saudi Arabia and the United States since FDR Jody Williams Nobel Peace Laureate, 1997 Aziz Huq Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law University of Chicago Law School Asli Bâli Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law Faculty Director, Promise Institute for Human Rights Director, UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies Helen Hershkoff Herbert M. and Svetlana Wachtell Professor of Constitutional Law and Civil Liberties New York University School of Law Aziz Rana Professor of Law Cornell Law School Scott J. Shapiro Charles F. Southmayd Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy Yale University Marjorie Cohn Professor Emerita, Thomas Jefferson School of Law Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na‘im Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law Emory University Stephen M. Walt Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard University Author, The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy Catherine Lutz Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Family Professor of Anthropology and International Studies, Director of the Watson Institute's Costs of War study Brown University Samuel Moyn Professor of Law and History Yale University Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (ret.) Distinguished Visiting Professor of Government at the College of William and Mary Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell Shireen Al-Adeimi Assistant Professor of Education Michigan State University Nabeel Khoury Nonresident Senior Fellow, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, The Atlantic Council Minister Counselor (ret.), United States Foreign Service Juan Cole Professor of History University of Michigan Nader Hashemi Director of the Center for Middle East Studies, University of Denver Co-author, Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East Sheila Carapico Professor, Political Science and Global Studies, University of Richmond Editor, Arabia Incognita: Dispatches from Yemen and the Gulf Daniel Bessner Anne H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Assistant Professor in American Foreign Policy University of Washington Mary L. Dudziak Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law, Emory University Author, War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences Martha Albertson Fineman Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law Emory University Jeremy Kessler Associate Professor of Law Columbia University John Mearsheimer R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, Co-Director of the Program on International Security Policy University of Chicago Richard Falk Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice, Emeritus Princeton University Rashid Khalidi Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies, Columbia University Author, Sowing Crisis: American Hegemony and the Cold War in the Middle East Michael J. Perry Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law Emory University Katharina Pistor Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law Columbia University Jedediah Purdy Robinson O. Everett Professor of Law Duke University Teemu Ruskola Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law Emory University Nikhil Pal Singh Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and History New York University Stephen Wertheim Visiting Assistant Professor of History Columbia University Alan Gilbert Distinguished University Professor, Josef Korbel School of International Studies University of Denver Tom Farer University Professor and Dean Emeritus Josef Korbel School of International Studies University of Denver Margaret L. Satterthwaite Professor of Clinical Law, Faculty Director and Co-Chair, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice New York University School of Law Noam Chomsky Laureate Professor, University of Arizona Institute Professor Emeritus, MIT Dani Rodrik Ford Foundation Professor of International Economy Harvard University Toby C. Jones Associate Professor of History and Chancellor's Scholar Rutgers University, New Brunswick Paul R. Pillar Georgetown University Former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia Danny Postel Assistant Director, Middle East and North African Studies Program, Northwestern University Co-author, Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East William French Chair of Peace Studies Program Loyola University Cathy May Professor of Political Science DePaul University Christian Maisch Assistant Professor & Academic Director American University Seth Anziska Mohamed S. Farsi-Polonsky Lecturer in Jewish-Muslim Relations University College London Falguni A. Sheth Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Emory University Tony Affigne Professor of Political Science Providence College Osamah Khalil Associate Professor of History, Syracuse University Author, America’s Dream Palace: Middle East Expertise and the Rise of the National Security State Mohamad Bazzi Associate Professor of Journalism New York University Brad Simpson Associate Professor of History University of Connecticut Franke Wilmer Professor and Department Head, Political Science Montana State University Thea Riofrancos Assistant Professor of Political Science Providence College Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law UCLA School of Law Sara Pursley Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies New York University Marwan M. Kraidy Anthony Shadid Chair in Global Media, Politics and Culture, Director, Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication University of Pennsylvania