Military Law and Precedents


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Military Law and Precedents


Book Description










Military Tribunals and Presidential Power


Book Description

Offers coverage of wartime extra-legal courts. Focusing on those periods when the Constitution and civil liberties have been most severely tested by threats to national security, Fisher critiques tribunals called during the presidencies of Washington, Madison, Jackson, Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Truman.







Precedents in Military Law


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The United States Department of Defense Law of War Manual


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The United States Department of Defense Law of War Manual: Commentary and Critique provides an irreplaceable resource for any politician, international expert, or military practitioner who wishes to understand the approach taken by the American military in the complex range of modern conflicts. Readers will understand the strengths and weaknesses of US legal and policy pronouncements and the reasons behind the modern American way of war, whether US forces deploy alone or in coalitions. This book provides unprecedented and precise analysis of the US approach to the most pressing problems in modern wars, including controversies surrounding use of human shields, fighting in urban areas, the use of cyberwar and modern weaponry, expanding understanding of human rights, and the rise of ISIS. This group of authors, including academics and military practitioners, provides a wealth of expertise that demystifies overlapping threads of law and policy amidst the world's seemingly intractable conflicts.




Obeying Orders


Book Description

A soldier obeys illegal orders, thinking them lawful. When should we excuse his misconduct as based in reasonable error? How can courts convincingly convict the soldier's superior officer when, after Nuremberg, criminal orders are expressed through winks and nods, hints and insinuations? Can our notions of the soldier's "due obedience," designed for the Roman legionnaire, be brought into closer harmony with current understandings of military conflict in the contemporary world? Mark J. Osiel answers these questions in light of new learning about atrocity and combat cohesion, as well as changes in warfare and the nature of military conflict. Sources of atrocity are far more varied than current law assumes, and such variations display consistent patterns. The law now generally requires that soldiers resolve all doubts about the legality of a superior's order in favor of obedience. It excuses compliance with an illegal order unless the illegality - as with flagrant atrocities - would be immediately obvious to anyone. But these criteria are often in conflict and at odds with the law's underlying principles and policies. Combat and peace operations now depend more on tactical imagination, self-discipline, and loyalty to immediate comrades than on immediate, unreflective adherence to the letter of superiors' orders, backed by threat of formal punishment. The objective of military law is to encourage deliberative judgment. This can be done, Osiel suggests, in ways that enhance the accountability of our military forces, in both peace operations and more traditional conflicts, while maintaining their effectiveness. Osiel seeks to "civilianize" military law while building on soldiers' own internal ideals of professional virtuousness. He returns to the ancient ideal of martial honor, reinterpreting it in light of new conditions, arguing that it should be implemented through realistic training in which legal counsel plays an enlarged role rather than by threat of legal prosecuti