# Militia Clauses **Status: stub — expand.** **Article I, § 8, clauses 15 and 16 of the U.S. Constitution.** Clause 15 gives **Congress** — not the President — the power "To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions." Clause 16 gives Congress the power to organize, arm, and discipline the militia and to govern the part of it in federal service, **reserving to the States** the appointment of officers and the authority to train according to congressional discipline. Article II, § 2 then makes the President Commander in Chief of the militia only "when called into the actual Service of the United States." The sequencing matters: the call-forth power is legislative, the command power is executive and conditional on the call. Every domestic deployment authority — 10 U.S.C. § 12406, the [[Insurrection Act]], Title 32 — is Congress exercising clause 15. Compare the [[Guarantee Clause]], which promises each State a republican form of government and protection against domestic violence *on application* of the state legislature or executive. ## See also - [[National Guard Federalization Flow]] · [[National Guard]] · [[Posse Comitatus Act]] · [[Insurrection Act]]