Legality of the Vietnam War

U.S. law

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, passed in 1964, authorized U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson to use military force in Southeast Asia. The Resolution was repealed in 1971, however, and President Richard M. Nixon cited his power as commander-in-chief of U.S. forces under Article Two of the United States Constitution as legal authority for operations in Vietnam. No formal declaration of war was ever made.

International law

Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter prohibits war that is not to maintain or restore international peace (Article 42) or undertaken in self-defense (Article 51). According to Richard Falk, "If the US Government had abided by international law, the dreadful experience of the Vietnam War would not have occurred." However, according to Benjamin B. Ferencz:

Legal action

In United States v. Sisson, a federal judge dismissed a challenge to the Vietnam War’s constitutionality because it involved “just the sort of evidence, policy considerations, and constitutional principles which elude the normal processes of the judiciary and which are far more suitable for determination by coordinate branches of the government.”

In Sarnoff v. Shultz, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court ruled on, and the U.S. Supreme was petitioned to reconsider, the constitutionality of then Treasury Secretary, George Schultz, allocating funds to the Vietnam War in spite of the fact that an official Declaration of War had never been made. The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to not reconsider the lower court's ruling, thus upholding Ninth Circuit's ruling that George Shultz had been tacitly authorized by the U.S. Congress to allocate funds to the Vietnam War by virtue of Congress's approval of the federal budgets which included these war funds.