How do historians and legal scholars count and categorize presidential invocations of the Insurrection Act, and why do their totals differ?
Executive summary
Historians and legal scholars do not share a single roll call of Insurrection Act invocations because they apply different counting rules: some count every presidential proclamation or statutory precursor; others count discrete events where troops were actually deployed or where legal prerequisites were met, producing totals that commonly hover around "about 30" but vary by inclusion rules [1] [2] [3]. Disagreement stems from definitional choices—whether to include early militia statutes, repeated proclamations linked to one crisis, or episodes where administrations claimed authority but did not satisfy the Act’s formal requirements [1] [4] [5].
1. The “about 30” headline—and why it’s appealing but imprecise
Multiple reputable summaries and guides note that the Insurrection Act and its predecessors have been invoked roughly 30 times in U.S. history, a figure repeated by the Brennan Center, mainstream news outlets, and fact-check pieces because it captures many related uses across centuries and is easy to report [2] [1] [3] [6]. That convenience masks complexity: the Brennan Center’s guide itself cautions that its 30-item list treats some multi‑proclamation responses to a single crisis as one entry and flags three high‑profile episodes commonly described as “uses” even though statutory prerequisites were not followed [1]. Scholars who want granular legal precision therefore often decline the simple tally.
2. Counting proclamations vs. counting deployments
Legal scholars focused on statutory compliance tend to count formal presidential proclamations and whether the Act’s prerequisites—such as a requisition from a governor or a prior proclamation ordering insurgents to disperse—were actually observed; that method can exclude episodes where presidents threatened force, exercised other authorities, or federalized guards under different statutes instead of the Insurrection Act [5] [1]. Historians, by contrast, frequently count broader political episodes—like uses of predecessor militia statutes in the early Republic or Lincoln’s 1861 actions during the Civil War—as part of a continuous practice of federal military intervention, which inflates totals relative to a strict statutory reading [4] [7].
3. Single events, multiple proclamations, and the bookkeeping problem
A single crisis has sometimes produced multiple proclamations or incremental federal actions; the Brennan Center groups such related proclamations as one “entry” for narrative clarity but also lists each proclamation as documentary evidence, creating a two-tiered count that can be read either way [1]. This bookkeeping choice produces divergent published counts: one researcher using proclamation-level counting will report a higher number than one aggregating by incident, and neither approach is inherently wrong if the counting rule is stated up front.
4. Contested episodes and “uses” that weren’t legally complete
Some episodes commonly labeled as Insurrection Act uses never satisfied legal requirements—examples highlighted by the Brennan Center and news reporting—so scholars committed to legal exactitude may omit them while journalists or political actors include them to emphasize historical precedent [1] [8]. That difference is central when presidents threaten to invoke the Act: threats and related federal deployments under other authorities (or political pressure on governors) look like “uses” in public debate even when they don’t meet the Act’s text or procedural steps [9] [8].
5. Interpretive agendas, reform advocates, and the politics of counting
Counting choices are rarely neutral: civil‑liberties groups and legal reformers emphasize instances and patterns that argue the law is overbroad or ripe for abuse—points made explicitly in Brennan Center reporting—while executive‑branch advocates or political actors may emphasize historical uses to justify contemporary threats, creating incentives to include more episodes in the tally [2] [1] [9]. Academic historians aim for long‑view continuity and context (e.g., Reconstruction and civil‑rights-era interventions), which can produce larger counts than technical legal histories restricted to Title 10 formalities [4] [5].
6. What good counting looks like in scholarship
The clearest scholarly practice is transparent methodology: state whether the count tallies proclamations, deployments, statutory predecessors, or aggregated incidents, and flag disputed episodes where legal prerequisites were absent—exactly the approach taken in the Brennan Center guide and echoed in legal commentary and court‑focused analysis [1] [5]. Where sources are silent about a claim, scholars must note that limitation rather than infer intent or legality; the literature shows that methodical transparency, not a single numeric canon, is the accountable standard.