Yes, they are legally obliged to disobey illegal orders.
But ultimately, its the judicial system that would decide if their refusal of the orders were acceptable or not.
Soldier facing a court-martial in the US get a panel of their peers, similar to a jury. So their peers could, in theory, do a “jury nullification”.
But, in a court martial, only 3/4 is required to convict, and a general court-martial, where death penalty is not a possible punishment, it requires only 8 members. So you need 3 of the 8 to even try to hang the jury, you need 6 of the 8 to acquit.
(Not a legal expert, just googled it)
There is zero chance that the current composition of the US military will invade Canada.
They’ll need a lot of military purges, and then take like a decade to use propaganda to turn the people against Canadians.
And given the long friendship between USA and Canada, this is very unlikely to happen.
Americans would riot, soldiers to refuse orders. The entire military would splinter into Pro-Constitution and Pro-Maga. A civil war would be fought before the battle ever reached Canada
The Pro-Constitution side would get help from Canada (obviously), so will many European countries.
Russia would probabbly help the Pro-Maga side.
I think China would just not get involved, and focus on their own thing: Taiwan.
I retired from the US military 3 years ago. Yes, they can refuse unlawful orders. If I was still serving, I’d be abusing the hell out of that regulation right now.
During Trump’s last presidency, our intelligence community actually held back a lot of details in his intelligence briefings because we knew he couldn’t be trusted to keep his mouth shut. He has a top secret clearance, not because he could be trusted with it, but because it was a requirement for his job. And he also reversed our decision to withhold clearances from sketchy members of our government, so a lot of untrustworthy people also got access to our sensitive data, and thanks to that, we had a lot of compromised missions during his first tenure as president.
But we also had a majority Democrat government, which kept him in check. This time around, he’s attempting to replace everyone he can with his “yes men” so he gets no push-back. He’s even been trying to replace military generals with his own loyalists. If he can control the military, he can basically stage a coup overnight and no one will be able to stop him.
Things are getting really dangerous right now, so that regulation about refusing unlawful orders is very important, and I hope our current military members are willing to exercise it as needed.
Too bad Trump canned all the JAGs…
Have any sources for that?
I mean, I am the source. This was my personal experience while serving in the military.
But if you want official reports to back up what I experienced, here’s you go:
I was working in an Intelligence unit when Trump was president (not the one directly briefing him) and it’s all anyone talked about at the time. They had to be extremely careful what information they shared with him because he would just go and post details on his social media accounts.
My unit had to change a lot of their missions and coordination because Trump would expose our secrets online. It ruined a lot of ongoing missions we had planned, and we had to scrap and rebuild a lot of our programs after he blabbed about them.
Trump fires top US general in unprecedented Pentagon shakeup
This was more recent, after I retired. But he basically fired our top military leaders, then made his own suggestions for replacements, completing ignoring the official promotion system we have in place.
He didn’t want people with years of experience and exemplary service to lead our military, he just wants his own loyalists in charge so he can control the military. He nominated highly unqualified people for the positions, with the only seemingly common quality being that they were loyal to Trump.
He was also annoyed at how hard it was to replace key people and wanted to circumvent official processes so he can hire and fire people at will, like his old businesses.
They are legally obliged to refuse to carry out illegal orders. “Just following orders” is no defence against war crime charges.
Quick question, what if refusing an order would get you killed?
Then you would be dead.
Your job in the military is to risk your life to save the lives of others. Refusing to follow illegal orders is part of that. If you think your superior will kill you and then commit war crimes literally over your dead body, arrest them so they can be tried in military court or die trying. I know, we’re human and this is easier said than done, but it is what should be done.
This is why they fired the JAG lawyers at the Pentagon: there won’t be any legal expert opinions in the military to tell the soldiers the order is illegal.
You can refuse to disobey an illegal order. The military has a fairly clear list of what constitutes “illegal,” like executing unarmed non-combatants. The UCMJ makes allowances for this; it protects you from being court martialed for refusing to obey an order. However, the soldier doesn’t get to decide whether the order of illegal; it can’t just be something they disagree with, like invading Canada.
I do believe that, if such circumstances came about, a soldier could probably get away with a fairly broad interpretation of “illegal orders.” However, this is mostly theoretical.
First, if you thought peer pressure on high school was bad, it’s nothing compared to the Army.
Second, it doesn’t stop there from being immediate consequences, some of which might very well result in you being dead, many of which would just make your life hell. There are an almost unlimited number of legal orders you could be given that would make your life hell.
Third, it’s really predicated on the illegal order being given fairly low down the chain. If the commander of the US forces sends down orders to kill all the orphans in a town, the USMC isn’t going to help.
Fourth, the person giving you the order could threaten to kill you, right there, unless you obey. Sure, they might get in trouble later, but that doesn’t really help you now, does it? And maybe they won’t get in trouble. Maybe they say they gave you some other legal order you disobeyed, and no-one is willing to gainsay them.
But really, your question is whether there’s any protection if you disagree with an order, and the answer is “no.” There’s a narrow set of defined “illegal orders” which you can, theoretically, disobey.
In peacetime, you can decide to become a conscientious objector, and look forward to spending some time in prison. Once you join, you have almost no option for rejecting a legal order, without facing some sort of punishment.
Not active duty or a vet, but have had a lot of family in the forces;
Their duty is to uphold the constitution and protect the nation ostensibly, so they’d be obligated to refuse an illegal order. Realistically you won’t see that play out amongst the rank and file in part due to the culture of ‘discipline’ in the US military, and also the reality of court martial/dishonourable discharge. If something like this did occur it would likely be the five and/or four star generals that make the call. Now you have two powerful factions at odds with potentially catastrophic results.
Either way there’s gonna be court martials.
Officers swear to uphold the constitution. Enlisted swear to follow orders
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