Collective Responsibility and the Career Military Officer's Right to Public Dissent
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Authors
Seagren, Chad W.
Subjects
Dissent
Military ethics
Collective responsibility
Civilian-military relations
Military ethics
Collective responsibility
Civilian-military relations
Advisors
Date of Issue
2019
Date
Publisher
Springer
Language
Abstract
Current norms among professional military officers that govern obedience and dissent strongly discourage officers from offering public criticism of policy enacted by civilian authorities, even if that policy is immoral, illegal, or unconstitutional. We identify a set of circumstances that create a moral imperative for an officer to take action and we leverage prevailing ethical guidelines to argue that in certain cases, even individual officers not directly involved in the execution of the policy have moral standing to offer public criticism of it. We consider the consequences of relaxing norms prohibiting public dissent and explore the trade-off between tolerating immoral policy and the likelihood of mistakenly criticizing appropriate policy. Finally, we offer evidence that current military-civilian relations in the United States are such that placing higher value on dissent would benefit professional military officers and may improve policy.
Type
Article
Description
The article of record as published may be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-019-09977-7
Series/Report No
Department
Identifiers
NPS Report Number
Sponsors
Funding
Format
19 p.
Citation
Seagren, Chad W. "Collective Responsibility and the Career Military Officer's Right to Public Dissent." Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 22.1 (2019): 41-59.
Distribution Statement
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.