Nonsense. The Articles of Confederation had legal force.
Has the US Armed Forces ever come close to mutiny against their Commender-In_Chief? Could it happen?
But the OP does not restrict the meaning to its use under the second US Constitution. You’re the one doing that. The Continental Congress served as a defacto government from 1775, and took it upon itself to raise armies for the United States. The Congress appointed Washington Commander in Chief of the Continental Army in 1775. However you want to nitpick, Washington was CinC of US Armed Forces (which is what the OP asks) before he was president, at a minimum from 1781-1783 (although I would say at 1776-1783).
They did, true… albeit the government wasn’t run in quite the same way as we know nowadays…
In the fall of 1783, Congress met at the French Arms Tavern in Trenton, New Jersey, where they pretended to conduct affairs of state while getting drunk. This lasted until they adjourned for Christmas, when they proceeded to get really drunk.
Today. They don’t have legal force today. Nothing from before 1789 has legal force today.
And, oddly, the OP has not come back to explicate exactly what he meant by his OP. He is usually quite conscientious in doing so, and hopefully will appear in the near future.
engaged
Exapno Mapcase. What prompted me to ask the question about whether a mutiny had ever occurred against the US Armed Forces was watching unmasked top brass in a meeting with President Trump and wondering how mixed their emotions were toward a civilian President/CIC with no wartime experience, potentially putting them in harms way.
Mutiny seems to be triggered by an emotional response to perceived ineptitude on the part of the military leadership. ( I have not read any precise clinical reasons for mutiny)
I don’t know the dynamics of the relationship Trump has with his generals. But there must be some line that they will not cross, even for their CIC. If they were asked to perform a mission or task that seemed unethical or unwarranted or put the country at risk, I suppose they could resign. But what is to prevent them from refusing en masse to carry out a command? Could it happen in individual states?
Sounds like they ran it exactly in the same way.
ETA: Also, this ridiculous hijack about the founding date of the country is absurd. Whether you want to date it from the Declaration of Independence or the ratification of the Articles of Confederation doesn’t really matter; the fact is “The United States” was established as a sovereign entity well before the present Constitution came into force.
Like, is it a surprise that laws, including organic laws, can be amended or replaced over time? That doesn’t mean you become a “new” country. That’s like saying France was founded in 1958.
So we’re on our Deuxième République, technically.
Thank you. I assumed that this was the scenario you envisioned, or a modern precedent.
You’re correct that resignation would be the normal response to an illegal request. Although it didn’t involve military personnel, the so-called Saturday Night Massacre went down exactly along these lines.
penultima thule already mentioned that the military took steps to prevent a drunk Nixon from acting. They were never needed and I don’t know of any overt actions at other times. Again, such extraordinary steps would be highly unlikely and it’s hard to speculate what would happen because the exact circumstances would decide everything.
Not sure what you mean by “Could it happen in individual states?” Could you clarify?
Moderating
Specific discussion regarding Trump and his relationship with the military would best be discussed in Politics and Elections. Hypotheticals could perhaps go in IMHO. Let’s keep this discussion to past instances.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
That’s not really accurate. The most obvious counter-example is the existence of the United States of America as a sovereign country. That was established before 1789 and nobody felt the need to declare ourselves an independent country again in 1789. We just assumed that our national identity carried over into our new government.
If that’s too abstract, there’s the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which was enacted under the Articles of Confederation. The laws that were established by this (such as federal administration of territories and the admission of new states which would be equal to existing states) were carried over to the new government.
I agree that the United States that was formed in 1789 was substantially different than the United States which was formed in 1776. But I think the new constitutional United States can be regarded as a successor state to the articles of confederation United States. But the articles of confederation United States was not a successor state to the British colonies. In other words, American history started in 1776 and has continued from there.
Oh, sure, if they just suggested this out of the blue, it’s very unlikely. But how many mutinies in history, US or otherwise, really just came out of the blue? For a professional force like the US military, any major mutiny or coup would have to be merely the last act in a long series of events that alienated the loyalty of a significant number of officers and enlisted members. In such a case, the General would probably know the answer before they even asked the question.
Clearly, based on history, it will take a lot for the US to get to such a point, but then, it also took Rome quite a while, but it did happen.
There are several corporations in the United States, including a number of colleges, which still derive their corporate status from a pre-1789 charter.
There were 17th-century manorial fiefdoms in New York well into the 1840s. Pretty sure the only reason they got rid of them is because judges got tired of having to learn Dutch.
Actually, no. Congress understood that AoC legislation no longer had legal force. They reformulated the ordinance with modifications and passed it as the Northwest Ordinance of 1789.
I had assumed that we were talking about federal legislation, so this is the only case that applies. I don’t know enough about individual state history to be able to cite whether states had to pass similar legislation to accommodate existing institutions. I’d be very surprised if they didn’t, though, even if it were some blanket grandfathering them in.
These types of things are generally called reception statutes or reception clauses. For example, New York’s Constitution of 1777 has this to say:
My understanding is that reception statutes apply specifically to former British colonies becoming independent, hence the timing of New York’s. If there’s a name for the equivalent formal process that occurred in 1789, I’m not aware of it.
It can definitely also happen when states or countries adopt new organic laws. Several US states (including New York) have rewritten their constitutions from time to time, and they generally include a clause stating that all laws and regulations and such from the old constitution will continue, except where they conflict with the new constitution.
Notably, the (current) US Constitution does not contain such a broad clause, which is why the new Congress decided to re-enact some legislation like the Northwest Ordinance.
But there absolutely were certain matters that were received from the AOC under the Constitution. For example, the engagements clause:
It would be pretty hard to argue that there was a sudden, clean break from the Confederation to the present union when in fact litigation from the confederation era over federal debts and contracts continued for some years after 1789.
(Fun fact! The Articles of Confederation also had a debts clause regarding contracts made by the Continental Congress.)
ETA: Here it is
My point exactly.
Again, my point exactly.
But that’s exactly what lawyers would have argued for any and all matters if Congress had not explicitly continued them when they started anew. It’s not hard, but impossible, to argue that there was not a clean break legally. If you don’t believe that, try to enforce any matter that was not addressed by the new Congress, the one and only Congress that makes our law.