Some treaties expressly reserve the right of the signatories to withdraw unilaterally. Some expressly forbid withdrawal. Most do neither.
In those cases, a court has to decide whether withdrawal is contrary to the terms of the treaty itself. In many cases, a treaty creates law on which countries, organizations and individuals may rely - say, a ban on particular kinds of weapons, which results in signatories acting in good faith halting development on them. Or human rights conventions, since they create law with consequences for domestic jurisprudence.
Cripes, I’m sorry I mentioned the Geneva Conventions. I have my doubts about your interpretation, but it’s tangential, so I’ll let it go.
Indeed, the courts are pretty damn clear that service members don’t enjoy all the same constitutional rights that the rest of us do. I understand that this is justified by Article I’s provision that Congress can make rules for the government of the land and naval forces; also, at least in the All Volunteer Force, you can say that the servicemen have voluntarily waived certain constitutional rights. But I’ve never heard it said that the Article I land and naval forces provision justifies the grunts violating other Americans’ constitutional rights! And the case that E-Sabbath mentioned, Covert v. Reid, suggests the opposite: neither the UCMJ nor international treaty can take away a soldier’s wife’s right to trial by jury, because she’s not in the armed forces.
As for a formal civil war, things do get tricky. The brute fact is that everything on the Oathkeepers’ list of verboten orders was done by both sides in the American Civil War, and nobody got prosecuted for it. I’ll assume that that was legal and constitutional; certainly the Constitution does specifically provide for calling out the militia to suppress rebellions. I can live with that, but I don’t think I can accept the idea that grunts have to violate the constitution on demand even in the absence of any actual rebellion or civil war, i.e. shooting, beating, mass-searching or imprisoning Americans who are not in arms against the government.
It all depends on the actual scenario, of course. Do you think the one you suggest is likely ?
Anyway, bottom line is : if the President orders the Army to take away all the guns, and the Congress condones the Presidential order (either actively or by silent consent), *and *the Supreme Court rules that this silly business with the comma has gone on long enough and doesn’t invalidate the order as unconstitutional… then silly oath or not, you’re going to unass your bunk and take away the goddamn guns, trooper ! And hop to it !
OTOH, if Captain **Trihs **orders your platoon to sweep the streets of Austin, TX to take away all the guns of his own initiative, then yeah, feel free to disregard his orders until further notice. He’s not even a real Captain, anyway, that’s a surplus Soviet uniform
Well, it’s pretty likely in that it already happened once in 1932, like I mentioned before: the Bonus Marchers, gassed, ridden down and beaten black and blue (not actually shot, let’s thank God for small favors), and all they were doing was standing around outside the Capital asking Congress for money (i.e. peaceably assembling and petitioning for redress of grievances).
Do I think Obama’s likely to do it? Obviously not, or I wouldn’t have volunteered for his campaign four hours every weekend for three months. But I would just as soon not have him, or anybody, be able to reckon with uncritical compliance from the armed forces if he did get into his head that the Constitution is just too much of an inconvenience to deal with.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes has been disbarred in Montana (basically for appearing in Arizona cases without a license then abandoning his clients during the Bundy standoff).
As an American of Japanese descent, I always appreciate this one and wish there had been American soldiers who had taken that oath, oh say, back in the early 1940s.
Once when Rachel Maddow was scoffing at the Oathkeepers and their promises with an as-if-any-of-this-would-ever-be-needed attitude, I emailed her and highlighted my appreciation of this part of their oath and my reason why. Naturally, she never responded either by email or in an on-air follow-up.
That ruling wouldn’t have meant much (actually, wouldn’t have existed) if the South had won. Or, rather, if the North hadn’t defeated the South. If the war ended in stalemate, the South would’ve been independent. No defeat, no SCOTUS ruling.
Of course, just like any other SCOTUS ruling doesn’t really have teeth unless it is enforced (“John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!”). But in the context octopus’s response to BrainGlutton’s post (that the issue was settled in 1865–when the Civil War ended–and that legally now the issue was a nonstarter) I think the fact that SCOTUS has interpreted the Constitution to preclude State secession is an important distinction to make.
The ironic thing is that the majority of these Oathkeepers are the same people who support rounding up American Muslims and putting them in camps or illegally searching every Mosque in the country. I am sure these Oathkeepers would be among the first in line if a future President Trump ever ordered such a thing.
Oathkeepers are not interested in protecting Americans from injustice. They are interested in making sure that an evil black president doesn’t order them to take away guns from white people. Bottom line, that’s all this organization has ever been about. Everything else is just meaningless fluff. It was a bunch of backwoods assholes scared to death that Obama was going to take their guns away.
I read an interview in which one “Oath Keeper” claimed Obama was going to use Fort Dix as a concentration camp for exterminating white people. One can only imagine what policies this person might arbitrarily decide are “unconstitutional.”
