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JUST FOLLOW ORDERS OR OBEY THE LAW? WHAT US TROOPS TOLD US ABOUT
REFUSING ILLEGAL COMMANDS  
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Charli Carpenter, Geraldine Santoso
November 21, 2025
The Conversation
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_ This is not the first time Trump has put members of the military in
situations whose legality has been questioned. But a large percentage
of service members understand their duty to follow the law in such a
difficult moment. _

There are certain situations in which the military should not fall in
line. , Bo Zaunders/Corbis Documentary via Getty Images

 

As the Trump administration carries out what many observers say are
illegal military strikes against vessels
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in the Caribbean allegedly smuggling drugs, six Democratic members of
Congress issued a video
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2025, telling the military “You can refuse illegal orders” and
“You must refuse illegal orders.”

The lawmakers have all served either in the military or the
intelligence community. Their message sparked a furious response on
social media from President Donald Trump, who called the
legislators’ action “seditious behavior, punishable by death
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One of the lawmakers, Sen. Elissa Slotkin, told The New York Times
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that she had heard from troops currently serving that they were
worried about their own liability in actions such as the ones in the
Caribbean.

This is not the first time
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Trump has put members of the military in situations whose legality
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has been questioned
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But a large percentage of service members understand their duty to
follow the law in such a difficult moment.

We are scholars
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international relations
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and international law. We conducted survey research at the University
of Massachusetts Amherst’s Human Security Lab
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many service members do understand the distinction between legal and
illegal orders, the duty to disobey certain orders, and when they
should do so.

The ethical dilemma

With his Aug. 11, 2025, announcement that he was sending the National
Guard
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– along with federal law enforcement – into Washington, D.C. to
fight crime, Trump edged U.S. troops closer to the kind of
military-civilian confrontations that can cross ethical and legal
lines.

Indeed, since Trump returned to office, many of his actions have
alarmed international human rights observers
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deported immigrants without due process
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held detainees in inhumane conditions
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threatened the forcible removal
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of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and deployed both the National
Guard and federal military troops
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to Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, Chicago and other cities to quell
largely peaceful protests or enforce immigration laws.

When a sitting commander in chief authorizes acts like these, which
many assert are clear violations of the law
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men and women in uniform face an ethical dilemma: How should they
respond to an order they believe is illegal?

The question may already be affecting troop morale
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“The moral injuries of this operation, I think, will be enduring,”
a National Guard member who had been deployed to quell public unrest
over immigration arrests in Los Angeles told The New York Times.
“This is not what the military of our country was designed to do, at
all.”

Troops who are ordered to do something illegal are put in a bind –
so much so that some argue that troops themselves are harmed
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when given such orders. They are not trained in legal nuances, and
they are conditioned
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if they obey “manifestly unlawful
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orders, they can be prosecuted. Some analysts fear that U.S. troops
are ill-equipped
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to recognize this threshold.

[A man in a blue jacket, white shirt and red tie at a lectern,
speaking.]
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President Donald Trump, flanked by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth
and Attorney General Pam Bondi, announced at a White House news
conference on Aug. 11, 2025, that he was deploying the National Guard
to assist in restoring law and order in Washington. Hu Yousong/Xinhua
via Getty Images
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Compelled to disobey

U.S. service members take an oath
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to uphold the Constitution. In addition, under Article 92 of the
Uniform Code of Military Justice and the U.S. Manual for
Courts-Martial, service members must obey lawful orders and disobey
unlawful orders
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Unlawful orders are those that clearly violate the U.S. Constitution,
international human rights standards or the Geneva Conventions.

Service members who follow an illegal order can be held liable
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and court-martialed or subject to prosecution by international
tribunals. Following orders from a superior is no defense.

Our poll, fielded between June 13 and June 30, 2025, shows that
service members understand these rules. Of the 818 active-duty troops
we surveyed, just 9% stated that they would “obey any order.” Only
9% “didn’t know,” and only 2% had “no comment.”

When asked to describe unlawful orders in their own words, about 25%
of respondents wrote about their duty to disobey orders that were
“obviously wrong,” “obviously criminal” or “obviously
unconstitutional.”

Another 8% spoke of immoral orders. One respondent wrote that
“orders that clearly break international law, such as targeting
non-combatants, are not just illegal — they’re immoral. As
military personnel, we have a duty to uphold the law and refuse
commands that betray that duty.”

Just over 40% of respondents listed specific examples of orders they
would feel compelled to disobey.

The most common unprompted response, cited by 26% of those surveyed,
was “harming civilians,” while another 15% of respondents gave a
variety of other examples of violations of duty and law, such as
“torturing prisoners” and “harming U.S. troops.”

One wrote that “an order would be obviously unlawful if it involved
harming civilians, using torture, targeting people based on identity,
or punishing others without legal process.”

[An illustration of responses such as 'I'd disobey if illegal' and
'I'd disobey if immoral.']
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A tag cloud of responses to UMass-Amherst’s Human Security Lab
survey of active-duty service members about when they would disobey an
order from a superior. UMass-Amherst’s Human Security Lab, CC BY
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Soldiers, not lawyers

But the open-ended answers pointed to another struggle troops face:
Some no longer trust U.S. law as useful guidance.

Writing in their own words about how they would know an illegal order
when they saw it, more troops emphasized international law as a
standard of illegality than emphasized U.S. law.

Others implied that acts that are illegal under international law
might become legal in the U.S.

“Trump will issue illegal orders,” wrote one respondent. “The
new laws will allow it,” wrote another. A third wrote, “We are not
required to obey such laws.”

Several emphasized the U.S. political situation directly in their
remarks, stating they’d disobey “oppression or harming U.S.
civilians that clearly goes against the Constitution” or an order
for “use of the military to carry out deportations.”

Still, the percentage of respondents who said they would disobey
specific orders – such as torture – is lower than the percentage
of respondents who recognized the responsibility to disobey in
general.

This is not surprising: Troops are trained
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to obey and face numerous social, psychological and institutional
pressures [[link removed]] to
do so. By contrast, most troops receive relatively little training in
the laws of war or human rights law.

Political scientists have found, however, that having information on
international law affects attitudes about the use of force
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the general public. It can also affect
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decision-making by military personnel.

This finding was also borne out in our survey.

When we explicitly reminded troops that shooting civilians was a
violation of international law, their willingness to disobey increased
8 percentage points.

Drawing the line

As my research with another scholar showed in 2020
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morality can make a difference in opposition to certain war crimes.

The preliminary results from our survey led to a similar conclusion.
Troops who answered questions on “manifestly unlawful orders”
before they were asked questions on specific scenarios were much more
likely to say they would refuse those specific illegal orders.

When asked if they would follow an order to drop a nuclear bomb on a
civilian city, for example, 69% of troops who received that question
first said they would obey the order.

But when the respondents were asked to think about and comment on the
duty to disobey unlawful orders before being asked if they would
follow the order to bomb, the percentage who would obey the order
dropped 13 points to 56%.

While many troops said they might obey questionable orders, the large
number who would not is remarkable.

Military culture makes disobedience difficult: Soldiers can be
court-martialed for obeying an unlawful order, or for disobeying a
lawful one.

Yet between one-third to half of the U.S. troops we surveyed would be
willing to disobey if ordered to shoot or starve civilians, torture
prisoners or drop a nuclear bomb on a city.

The service members described the methods they would use. Some would
confront their superiors directly. Others imagined indirect methods:
asking questions, creating diversions, going AWOL, “becoming
violently ill.”

Criminologist Eva Whitehead researched actual cases of troop
disobedience of illegal orders and found that when some troops disobey
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– even indirectly – others can more easily find the courage to do
the same.

Whitehead’s research showed that those who refuse to follow illegal
or immoral orders are most effective when they stand up for their
actions openly.

The initial results of our survey – coupled with a recent spike in
calls to the GI Rights Hotline
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– suggest American men and women in uniform don’t want to obey
unlawful orders.

Some are standing up loudly
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Many are thinking ahead to what they might do if confronted with
unlawful orders. And those we surveyed are looking for guidance from
the Constitution and international law to determine where they may
have to draw that line.

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_This story, initially published on Aug. 13, 2025, has been updated to
include a reference to a video issued by Democratic members of
Congress._

_Zahra Marashi, an undergraduate research assistant at the University
of Massachusetts Amherst, contributed to the research for this
article._

* Unlawful orders
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