Court Opinion

ID: 9425779
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:15:49.430353+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:57.506276
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Blackmun,
with whom The Chief Justice joins,
concurring.
I wholly concur in the Court’s opinion. I write only to state what for me is a crucial difference between the majority and dissenting views in this case. My Brother Stewaet complains that men of common intelligence must necessarily speculate as to what “conduct unbecoming an officer .and a gentleman” or conduct to the “prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces” or conduct “of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces” really means. He implies that the average soldier or sailor would not reasonably expect, under the general articles, to suffer military reprimand or punishment for engaging in sexual acts with a chicken, or window peeping in a trailer park, or cheating while calling bingo numbers. Post, at 779. He argues that “times have surely changed” and that the articles are “so vague and uncertain as to be incomprehensible to the servicemen who are to be governed by them.” Post, at 781, 788.
These assertions are, of course, no less judicial fantasy than that which the dissent charges the majority of in*763dulging. In actuality, what is at issue here are concepts of “right” and “wrong” and whether the civil law can accommodate, in special circumstances, a system of law which expects more of the individual in the context of a broader variety of relationships than one finds in civilian life.
In my judgment, times have not changed in the area of moral precepts. Fundamental concepts of right and wrong are the same now as they were under the Articles of the Earl of Essex (1642), or the British Articles of War of 1765, or the American Articles of War of 1775, or during the long line of precedents of this and other courts upholding the general articles. And, however unfortunate it may be, it is still necessary to maintain a disciplined and obedient fighting force.
A noted commentator, Professor Bishop of Yale, has recently stated that “[a]lmost all of the acts actually charged under [Articles 133 and 134], notably drug offenses, are of a sort which ordinary soldiers know, or should know, to be punishable.” J. Bishop, Justice Under Fire 87-88 (1974). I agree. The subtle airs that govern the command relationship are not always capable of specification. The general articles are essential not only to punish patently criminal conduct, but also to foster an orderly and dutiful fighting force. One need only read the history of the permissive — and short-lived— regime of the Soviet Army in the early days of the Russian'Revolution to know that command indulgence of an undisciplined rank and file can decimate a fighting force. Moreover, the fearful specter of arbitrary enforcement of the articles, the engine of the dissent, is disabled, in my view, by the elaborate system of military justice that Congress has provided to servicemen, and by the self-evident, and self-selective, factor that commanders who are arbitrary with their charges will not produce the effi*764cient and effective military organization this country needs and demands for its defense.
In Fletcher v. United States, 26 Ct. Cl. 541 (1891), the Court of Claims reviewed a court-martial finding that a Captain Fletcher was guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer in having, “ ‘with intent to defraud, failed, neglected, and refused to pay [one W.] the amount due him, though repeatedly requested to do so.’ ” The court found this charged offense to come within the article. The sentiments expressed by Judge Nott, writing for the court in that case, are just as applicable to the case we decide today.
“It must be confessed that, in the affairs of civil life and under the rules and principles of municipal law, what we ordinarily know as fraud relates to the obtaining of a man’s money, and not to refusing to pay it back. It is hard for the trained lawyer to conceive of an indictment or declaration which should allege that the defendant defrauded A or B by refusing to return to him the money which he had borrowed from him. Our legal training, the legal habit of mind, as it is termed, inclines us to dissociate punishment from acts which the law does not define as offenses. As one of our greatest writers of fiction puts it, with metaphysical fitness and accurate sarcasm, as she describes one of her legal characters, ‘His moral horizon was limited by the civil code of Tennessee.’ That it is a fraud to obtain a man’s money by dishonest representations, but not a fraud to keep it afterwards by any amount of lying and deceit, is a distinction of statutory tracing. The gambler who throws away other people’s money and the spendthrift who uses it in luxurious living instead of paying it back, cheat and defraud their creditors as effectually as the knaves and sharpers who *765drift within the meshes of the criminal law. We learnt as law students in Blackstone that there are things which are malum in se and, in addition to them, things which are merely malum prohibitum; but unhappily in the affairs of real life we find that there are many things which are malum in se without likewise being malum prohibitum. In military life there is a higher code termed honor, which holds its society to stricter accountability; and it is not desirable that the standard of the Army shall come down to the requirements of a criminal code.” Id., at 562-563.
Relativistic notions of right and wrong, or situation ethics, as some call it, have achieved in recent times a disturbingly high level of prominence in this country, both in the guise of law reform, and as a justification of conduct that persons would normally eschew as immoral and even illegal. The truth is that the moral horizons of the American people are not footloose, or limited solely by “the civil code of Tennessee.” The law should, in appropriate circumstances, be flexible enough to recognize the moral dimension of man and his instincts concerning that which is honorable, decent, and right.*

My Brother Douglas’ rendition of Captain Levy’s offense in this case would leave one to believe that Levy was punished for speaking against the Vietnam war at an Army wives’ tea party. In fact, Levy was convicted under charges that he, while in the performance of his duties at the United States Army Hospital in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, told the enlisted personnel in his charge that he would not train Special Forces aide men “because they are 'liars and thieves,’ ‘killers of peasants,’ and ‘murderers of women and children.’ ” He also stated, in the presence of patients and those performing duty under his immediate supervision, that he would refuse to go to Vietnam if ordered to do so and they should refuse to do so. Moreover, after being ordered to give dermatological training to aide men, he announced to his students that “[t] he Hospital Commander has given me an order to train special forces personnel, which order I *766have refused and will not obey.” Unless one is to blind one’s eyes in utter worship of the First Amendment, it needs no explication that these disloyal statements and actions undertaken by an officer in the course of duty, are subject to sanction.