"request for authority" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when you are asking someone for permission, authorization, or approval. For example, "I'm submitting a request for authority to take the afternoon off."
And it denied the Justice Department's request for authority to weaken the barrier between counterintelligence and criminal investigations.
The second week in October, Congress obliged Bush's request for authority to invade Iraq in order to remove weapons of mass destruction.
Some Democrats said they simply did not trust the president, and drew a parallel to Mr. Bush's request for authority to wage war in Iraq.
Ominously, Congress acquiesced to NASA's request for authority to help pay the bills with dollars from the previously separate science account.
For much of the campaign season, members of the House and the Senate were pulled off the campaign trail by the debate in Washington on President Bush's request for authority to remove President Saddam Hussein of Iraq from power.
On Oct. 9, 2002, Mr. Kerry rose in the Senate chamber to make a very different speech, a tortured, 45-minute argument reluctantly supporting George W. Bush's request for authority to disarm Mr. Hussein, almost certainly by force.
WASHINGTON — In late April, the military's Special Operations Command presented the State Department and Congress with an urgent request for new authority to train and equip security forces in places like Yemen and Kenya.
The administration has included the request for such authority in the emergency supplemental spending bills for the State Department it sent to Capitol Hill.
The House of Representatives has approved Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.'s request for the authority to extend credit and buy unlimited equity stakes in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac if needed.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA), which is a secret court that was supposed to protect our privacy rights, was rubber-stamping every NSA request for the authority to spy without any real oversight.
The department said today that it intended to appeal the court's decision not to grant its request for broader authority to share intelligence information with criminal investigators, and that secret appeal papers were filed today with a special three-judge panel that oversees the surveillance court.
