scholarly journals A rose by any other name: how the United States charges its service members for violating the laws of war

Author(s):  
Chris Jenks
2020 ◽  
pp. 088626052097031
Author(s):  
Cary Leonard Klemmer ◽  
Ashley C. Schuyler ◽  
Mary Rose Mamey ◽  
Sheree M. Schrager ◽  
Carl Andrew Castro ◽  
...  

Prior research among military personnel has indicated that sexual harassment, stalking, and sexual assault during military service are related to negative health sequelae. However, research specific to LGBT U.S. service members is limited. The current study aimed to explore the health, service utilization, and service-related impact of stalking and sexual victimization experiences in a sample of active-duty LGBT U.S. service members ( N = 248). Respondent-driven sampling was used to recruit study participants. U.S. service members were eligible to participate if they were 18 years or older and active-duty members of the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, or U.S. Air Force. This study included a sizeable portion of transgender service members ( N = 58, 23.4%). Sociodemographic characteristics, characteristics of military service, health, and sexual and stalking victimization in the military were assessed. Regression was used to examine relationships between health and service outcomes and sexual and stalking victimization during military service. Final adjusted models showed that experiencing multiple forms of victimization in the military increased the odds of visiting a mental health clinician and having elevated somatic symptoms, posttraumatic stress disorder symptomatology, anxiety, and suicidality. Sexual and stalking victimization during U.S. military service was statistically significantly related to the mental and physical health of LGBT U.S. service members. Interventions to reduce victimization experiences and support LGBT U.S. service members who experience these types of violence are indicated. Research that examines the role of LGBT individuals’ experiences and organizational and peer factors, including social support, leadership characteristics, and institutional policies in the United States military is needed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4_suppl3) ◽  
pp. 2325967120S0014
Author(s):  
Andrew S. Murtha ◽  
Matthew R. Schmitz

Background: The primary focus of periacetabular osteotomy (PAO) literature has been survivorship until hip arthroplasty. This endpoint overlooks its impact on young, active patients. Hypothesis/Purpose: This study sought to assess the impact of the PAO on the careers of active duty members of the United States Armed Forces. Methods: A retrospective review identified 38 patients who underwent PAO performed by a single surgeon at an academic, military medical center from January 2014 through April 2017. Twenty-one of the patients were active duty United States military service members (16 female, 5 male) and had a minimum 28 months of post-operative follow-up at the time of review. Preoperative and postoperative duty restrictions were noted and referrals to the U.S Army and U.S. Air Force Medical Evaluation Boards (MEB) were queried. Results: The average age at surgery was 25.6 years (range, 19-40y). Preoperatively, sixteen patients (94.1%) were on duty restrictions, one had been referred to the MEB, and records were not available on three patients who separated from the military prior to review. Average follow-up was 3.4 years (range, 2.3 – 5.4y). Among the patients without a preoperative MEB referral, 85.0% remained on active duty (n = 12) or completed their military service commitment (n=5). Of the fourteen patients with temporary duty restrictions preoperatively, 35.7% (n=5) were relieved of their restrictions and returned to full duty and 50% (n=7) were retained on active service with permanent duty restrictions. Such permanent duty restrictions typically consisted of modifications to the aerobic component of the semiannual military fitness testing. Six patients (28.6%) were referred to the MEB including one who was referred prior to PAO. Of these patients, two were deemed fit to retain on active service with permanent duty restrictions, two were medically separated for non-hip conditions, and two were medically separated for a hip condition. The average Veteran Affairs (VA) disability score related to hip pathology in patients referred to MEB was 16% (range 0-40%). Conclusion: This is the first study to look at the PAO in active duty military service members. In patients with symptomatic acetabular dysplasia, PAO may provide an opportunity to relieve preoperative duty restrictions and allow for continued military service. Further study with the inclusion of patient reported outcomes are necessary assess the impact of the procedure in this active patient population.


Author(s):  
Andrew Goodhart ◽  
Jami K. Taylor

For most of its history, the U.S. military has maintained a policy of exclusion toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people serving in uniform. The justifications for these exclusions have included the view that being homosexual or transgender is a psychological disorder, that it undermines military morale and effectiveness, and a fear that LGBT people would be vulnerable to foreign espionage. Explicit policies banning consensual homosexual sex—and excluding from service those who engage in it—date to the period between World Wars I and II, but de facto efforts at exclusion have existed since the early days of the republic. Regulations governing homosexuals in the military came under pressure in the 1970s and 1980s as societal views toward lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people changed, and those LGB service members discharged under the policy increasingly challenged their treatment in court. (Public pressure to change regulations governing transgender people in the military arose mostly in the 2000s, though litigation efforts date to the 1970s.) In addition to general shifts in public and legal opinion, the debate over LGB people serving in the U.S. military was affected by the experience of foreign militaries that allow LGB people to serve. United States law began to loosen formal restrictions on LBG people serving in uniform with the passage of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) in 1994, but it still required LGB people to serve in secret. Changing public perceptions of LGB people and problems implementing the ban galvanized support for eliminating such restrictions. In 2010, President Obama signed legislation repealing DADT and removing all restrictions on LGB people serving in the military. However, transgender people do not enjoy the same rights. The Trump administration has revised Obama-era rules on transgender service members to enable greater exclusion. The issue is being contested in the courts and appears ripe for further political and legal dispute.


2020 ◽  
pp. 281-312
Author(s):  
Craig Jones

This concluding chapter places the US–Israel approach to targeting in international context and reflects on the limits, possibilities, and future of juridical warfare. It argues that while other NATO states employ military lawyers in targeting, notably in US-led military coalitions, they have generally taken a more restrictive interpretation of the laws of war than the United States or Israel. Juridification is an uneven process: not all states are equally invested in its language or practice. Drawing on the examples of Syria and Yemen, the chapter shows how juridification today (its presence and absence) is conditioned by the retreat of multilateralism. The chapter also reflects on controversies concerning lawfare and humanitarianism. In an era of ‘irresponsible politics’, it asks what the rehabilitation of war might mean for the revival of an antiwar politics (as opposed to single issue campaigns against drones or torture, for example) as was mobilized against the Vietnam War.


2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 667-710 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie McCurry

One of the most important legacies of the American Civil War, not just in the re-united States of America but also in the nineteenth and twentieth century world, were the new laws of war that the conflict introduced. “Lieber's Code,” named after the man who authored it for the Lincoln administration, was a set of instructions written and issued in April 1863 to govern the conduct of “the armies of the United States in the field.” It became a template for all subsequent codes, including the Hague and Geneva conventions. Widely understood as a radical revision of the laws of war and a complete break with the Enlightenment tradition, the code, like the war that gave rise to it, reflected the new post-Napoleonic age of “people's wars.” As such, it pointed forward, if not as the expression of the first total war, then at least as an expression of the first modern one, with all the blurring of boundaries that involved.


2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 511-550 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Smiley

Writing for his fellow military officers in early 1903, United States Army Major C.J. Crane reflected on the recent Philippine–American War. The bloody struggle to suppress an insurgency in the Philippines after the United States had annexed them from Spain in 1899 had officially concluded the previous July. The war had been accompanied by fierce racist sentiments among Americans, and in keeping with these, Crane described his foes as “the most treacherous people in the world.” But Crane's discussion drew as much on concepts of law as it did on race. The average American officer, Crane argued, had “remembered all the time that he was struggling with an enemy who was not entitled to the privileges usually granted prisoners of war,” and could be summarily executed, without benefit of “court-martial or other regular tribunal.” If anything, the Americans had been too generous. “Many [American] participants in the struggle,” he maintained, “have failed to fully understand that we were practically fighting an Asiatic nation in arms and almost every man a soldier in disguise and a violator” of the laws of war. But what did those laws mean to the United States during the conflict, and what does this indicate about the broader history of international law's relationship to empire?


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