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US Army officer convicted for massacre at My Lai, Vietnam (1943–2024)
The available reporting does not provide a comprehensive historical list of every military officer ever court‑martialed for refusing orders; recent coverage centers on a 2025 controversy over Democrat...
The Nuremberg Trials established that "just following orders" — the superior‑orders defense — cannot serve as an absolute shield against prosecution for war crimes: the London Charter and the IMT judg...
The core U.S. military rule is that service members must obey lawful orders but must refuse clearly unlawful, criminal orders—especially those ordering atrocities—an idea reflected in precedents like ...
The canonical rejection of the “just following orders” defense traces to early modern precedents and was crystallized at Nuremberg after World War II, a lineage courts‑martial in the United States now...
Courts‑martial have long rejected blanket immunity for "I was following orders," instead treating obedience to superior orders as a constrained defense: lawful orders must be followed, but manifestly ...
Yes — U.S. presidents have intervened to spare or relieve military personnel accused or convicted of battlefield offenses, but the most direct, full pardons of service members found by military juries...
U.S. military law recognizes a duty to refuse "manifestly unlawful" orders in narrow circumstances; courts and commentators tie that duty to historic precedents like Nuremberg and to Article 92 of the...
There is widespread reporting and legal commentary that U.S. military law requires service members to refuse “patently unlawful” orders and that following illegal orders can expose troops to prosecuti...
Military courts treat the lawfulness of an order as a legal question for the judge, but the operative standard in U.S. military practice is narrow: orders are presumed lawful unless they conflict with...
Three well-known episodes illustrate the legal and moral debate over “refusal of unlawful orders”: the Nuremberg Trials rejected the superior‑orders defense and produced verdicts punishing many top Na...
Rules of engagement (ROE) and international humanitarian law (IHL) shape when an order is legally binding and when subordinates may be required to refuse it: U.S. military doctrine and the DoD Law of ...