The War Powers Act

Please see the attached pdf ess.ay War Powers Act.jpg Download War Powers Act.jpg (also posted above), “The President versus the World: How Presidents Seized Control of the War Power”.  This page addresses the 1973 War Powers Act and how it has evolved over the past 40 years.  Essentially, the conclusion drawn in that ess.ay is that the War Powers Act is essentially ineffective and, for all intents and purposes, powerless to stop Presidents from unilateral military control and deployment of troops into combat. 

If this is so, after having read that page as well as the preceding page, answer the following questions:

1. If no judicial court of authority, namely the United States Supreme Court, has stricken the 1973 War Powers Act and declared it null and void constitutionally, how is it that the authors of the text book are able to conclude Congress has few, if any, war powers remaining?  How can this be?  The law is the law, is it not?  (Specifically, explain the political phenomenon that has occurred here and has similarly occurred in other legal and constitutional matters allowing the law to be ignored.) 
2. Attempting to think as objectively as possible and placing your political partisan beliefs aside (looking at presidents as just that, presidents, as opposed to Democratic or Republican presidents) what does the increase in presidential unilateral military power do to the United States as a nation, for better or worse?  (There is no correct answer, yet think through the checks and balances consequences.)