For more than fifty years following the 1949 revision of the Geneva Conventions, legal scholars, government experts, and military practitioners understood the articles that defined when the protections of these treaties came into force—Common Articles 2 and 3—as the exclusive criteria which triggered the laws of war.  From these two articles emerged an “either/or” law-applicability paradigm: inter-state, or international, armed conflicts triggered the full corpus of the laws

The War Powers Resolution (WPR) has led a beleaguered existence.  Since its enactment in 1973, it has been labeled ineffectual and useless.  This Note proves, however, that to review presidential unilateral uses of force since 1973 is to find a spirit of compliance with the WPR, as these uses of force have been characterized by their brevity and their lack of spilled U.S. blood.  While minor departures from the WPR’s black-letter requirements are conceded, none of these uses