Pitt Constitutional Law Professor to Testify Before Congress April 10

PITTSBURGH-Jules L. Lobel, University of Pittsburgh professor of law, will testify before the Committee on Foreign Affairs' Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight at 3 p.m. April 10 in the Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C. The hearing is titled "War Powers in the 21st Century: The Constitutional Perspective."

"The Constitution requires that Congress approve any initiation of hostilities by the United States Armed Forces except to repel an attack on American territory, troops, and citizens," said Lobel. In his testimony, Lobel will support amending the War Powers Resolution to ensure that the Constitution's directive is enforced.

Lobel, a professor of international and constitutional law in Pitt's School of Law, also is vice president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a national civil and human rights organization. He has been one of the foremost legal challengers of what he calls the exercise of unilateral presidential war-making during the past two decades.

Lobel is the author of "Success Without Victory: Lost Legal Battles and the Long Road to Justice in America" (New York University Press, 2004) and "Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror" (The New Press, 2007), with David D. Cole, a professor of law at Georgetown University. The book won the inaugural Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize from the Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

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