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When he first began studying the war powers of the president and Congress, Taylor Reveley was finishing his last semester in law school and the Vietnam War was well under way.

“The more I delved into the respective authority of the president and Congress over our use of force abroad, the clearer it became that there are relatively few constitutional certainties about the war powers,” said Reveley of his first research in this area in spring 1968. “I’ve been hooked on the mysteries of the war powers ever since.”

Four decades later, William and Mary’s interim president is still hooked on the subject.

Reveley served as co-director of the National War Powers Commission, a bipartisan group headed by former Secretaries of State James Baker and Warren Christopher brought together to try to find a practical way of getting the president and congressional leaders to consult meaningfully about war and peace decisions as they are being made and to encourage Congress as a whole to make its views known about the end result. The commission -- a group formed by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia -- held a press conference Tuesday on Capitol Hill to release its findings. The commission’s recommendations hinge on a proposed War Powers Consultation Act of 2009, meant to replace the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which has not worked in practice.