Can a soldier refuse to carry a weapon? During WWII, Desmond Doss joined the US Army as a combat medic. Due to his religious belief in nonviolence, he refused to carry a weapon and was eventually allowed to do so, going on to win various medals (including the Medal of Honor) for rescuing casualties in various battles of the Pacific Theatre—his story was later made into the film Hacksaw Ridge. Is it still possible today for somebody to join the armed forces, but to refuse to carry a weapon? Specifically, I am wondering about the US and the UK armed forces, but interesting answers about any other country are welcome. Initially I thought Doss would have been conscripted which may have changed things, but apparently he chose to enlist so that argument doesn't hold up. I've searched but I haven't found anything about whether this would still be possible now or if military law may have changed to disallow it.
Under US Army Regulation 601-210 as of 2016, conscientious objection will normally disqualify someone applying to enlist, but the disqualification can be waived. Under Army Regulation 600-43, if they enlist they’ll typically be assigned to the medical field and will receive modified basic training (as conscientious objectors, they won’t be trained in the use of weapons). As for officers and warrant officers, Army Regulation 601-100 says an applicant is disqualified unless they’re applying to the Army Medical Department or to be a chaplain. Serving personnel can also apply for conscientious objector status if they develop beliefs during their service, also under Army Regulation 600-43. They can either ask to be discharged or ask to do noncombatant service, and if their application is approved then they’ll get whichever one they asked for. While DOD Instruction 1300.06 (the military-wide conscientious objector regulation) says that the services can discharge someone who just requests noncombatant service, the Army policy is to keep them around. If they do ask to be discharged, they can’t decide to enlist again in the future (unlike conscientious objection in general, this disqualification can’t be waived). Lastly, under Army Regulation 601-280, enlisted personnel who are conscientious objectors generally can’t reenlist unless they’re in the medical field (in which case they can reenlist with a contract that will keep them in the medical field). Of course, the fact that conscientious objectors are potentially eligible to serve doesn’t mean they’ll be accepted. That depends on the needs of the Army. If the Army has plenty of people, they might not want someone who’s restricted to noncombatant roles. If they’re desperate for people, they’re much more likely to accept applicants.
united-states It is not required for a person to formally assert a fifth- or a first-amendment right when questioned by the police. One can simply be silent, refuse to answer any questions, without giving any reasons. But probably more effective and just as legal is to say &quot;I won't answer any questions until I have talked with a lawyer. I want a lawyer, now.&quot; That is perhaps less likely than using the words &quot;plead the fifth&quot; to be assumed to be a confession of guilt, although some people and some police may take almost anything as a confession of guilt. By the way some of the points you distilled from the video (which I have not watched yet) are correct, some are half-truths, and some are quite incorrect. For example: The 5th amendment was not designed as a shelter for the guilty (despite it often being used as such). It was designed to help prevent you from unknowingly incriminating yourself. As a matter of history, this is quite incorrect. It arose historically out of a reaction to government procedures deemed oppressive. See https://law.stackexchange.com/a/63690/17500 for more detail. But helping people avoid unintentionally incriminating themselves is one of its major current functions. You can't talk your way out of getting arrested. Sometimes you can, but it is never safe to count on it. You can't know in advance if it will work, and more often than not it doesn't. Everything you tell the police can be used against you but not to help you. Not quite. If your statement is recorded, as is likely nowadays, the whole statement must be given to your lawyer and entered into evidence if you are eventually charged. (See Brady vs Maryland) Things said in your own favor may be discounted as self-serving, but the judge and jury will still hear them. But they can be very risky.
Your question is about "Would it be kidnapping if I was injured and someone took me to a hospital without my consent", so I don't understand these other answers which say "it depends on the situation". The key point is what you mean by "without my consent". Good Samaritan laws are also relevant, which offer defenses to people who do things that would otherwise be unlawful when they are doing it with good intentions to help someone who they believe is injured or would become injured without their intervention. The main things to consider are the degree of injury, which is a spectrum ranging from no injury at all to being dead, and whether the injured person is conscious. Are you so injured that you are unconscious? In most jurisdictions, being unconscious is considered as you consenting to any actions which are done with the intent of giving you medical assistance, which is on a spectrum of saying "hey are you ok?" or shaking you in order to wake you up, all the way up to treatment including major surgery. So by being unconscious it is usually automatically consent, but if you are awake and are refusing help or treatment, even if you could die if you didn't receive treatment, it would be easy to argue that you were not consenting and that any treatment/assistance etc was unlawful. This situation sometimes happens, and EMTs are often trained to wait until the person goes unconscious to then give them medical assistance/transport etc, but assisting someone before they go unconscious could still be argued as permissible, if the injured person was so distressed that they were unable to give/refuse consent, or at least if the assistor believed that to be the case. This is why if someone has a major medical problem and is unconscious, hospitals can resuscitate them and even perform surgery without them signing a consent form. By being unconscious, it is considered that they are consenting to any necessary surgery to help them, even including amputation or other negative consequences. Conversely, if someone has a valid Advance healthcare directive on file which forbids measures such as resuscitation, they will be considered not to consent, and will usually be left alone without life-saving assistance. Resuscitating/performing surgery on someone in this case can be cause for damages to the injured person, because it would have been clear that they did not consent to such assistance.
What factors go into determining whether or not killing targeted non-combatants is considered a war crime? The cynical answer is &quot;it depends on who wins and who judges&quot;. There are various definitions of what constitutes a civilian, all of which are &quot;negative definitions&quot; (i.e. Not a member of an armed force(e.g. an army, navy, etc; actually wielding arms is not required) or &quot;involved in hostilities&quot;, meaning not a partisan, insurgent, or other form of &quot;belligerent&quot;). Civilians should not be targeted by military actions under international law. On the other hand, spies, especially those who's activities cause death, are explicitly not soldiers entitled to Prisoner-of-War status, and can be executed. There are some protections provided for spies, but those generally seem to be geared towards soldiers captured during &quot;non spy&quot; activities with regards to past actions as spies, as opposed to &quot;in the field&quot; spies...and it is unclear to me what that means for an &quot;informant&quot; who presumably gathers intelligence in their day-to-day activities. To what extent an informant is a &quot;spy&quot; is unclear. Espionage consists of the access, generally on behalf of a state (or belligerent party), to information that is held by another and considered as confidential or strategic, in the military, security, or economic field. Identities of personnel is very much confidential and strategic information, so passing that information to the government seems to qualify as espionage. Whether or not this equates to being &quot;involved in hostilities&quot; is unclear. The case could certainly be made that an informant, especially one who does not go out of their way to gather intelligence or receive compensation is a civilian. Likewise, the case could certainly be made that they are a de facto belligerent, being no different in their effective activities than a formal intelligence operative or artillery coordinates finder. Wars are messy; civil wars especially so.
It is almost certainly fine as long has you have a "good reason". The police website give a list of examples when carrying a knife would have a "good reason" (like a chef getting a set of knives out of her car, for example). Likewise, a plastic knife isn't considered a weapon as long as you don't start threatening people with it. As long as you don't start swinging it around, you should be fine.
It appears that Plummer v. State is still valid, but only in a very limited fact pattern. It is often quoted on the internet to justify the idea that a person may resist any unlawful arrest with force. That may have been true when Plummer was decided, and it was the clear holding of Bad Elk v. United States, 177 U.S. 529 (1900) But Bad Elk is bad law today -- the wide adoption of the Model Penal Code starting in 1962 removed the right to resist a merely unlawful arrest. The right to use self-defense against excessive force by an officer remains, but is narrowly limited, and courts rarely find such resistance justified. In State v. Mulvihill 57 N.J. 151 (1970) The Supreme Court of New Jersey held: If, in effectuating the arrest or the temporary detention, the officer employs excessive and unnecessary force, the citizen may respond or counter with the use of reasonable force to protect himself, and if in so doing the officer is injured no criminal offense has been committed. However, the Mulvihill court cautioned: State v. Koonce, 89 N.J. Super. 169 (App. Div. 1965) held that "a private citizen may not use force to resist arrest by one he knows or has good reason to believe is an authorized police officer engaged in the performance of his duties, whether or not the arrest is illegal under the circumstances obtaining." (89 N.J. Super. at 184.) The opinion put to rest the notion that the common law rule existing in some jurisdictions, which permits a citizen to resist, even with reasonable force, an unlawful arrest by a police officer, was applicable in New Jersey. ... Accordingly, in our State when an officer makes an arrest, legal or illegal, it is the duty of the citizen to submit and, in the event the seizure is illegal, to seek recourse in the courts for the invasion of his right of freedom. The Mulvihill court explained the difference in the two csase by saying: Despite his duty to submit quietly without physical resistance to an arrest made by an officer acting in the course of his duty, even though the arrest is illegal, his right to freedom from unreasonable seizure and confinement can be protected, restored and vindicated through legal processes. However, the rule permitting reasonable resistance to excessive force of the officer, whether the arrest is lawful or unlawful, is designed to protect a person's bodily integrity and health and so permits resort to self-defense. Simply stated, the law recognizes that liberty can be restored through legal processes but life or limb cannot be repaired in a courtroom. And so it holds that the reason for outlawing resistance to an unlawful arrest and requiring disputes over its legality to be resolved in the courts has no controlling application on the right to resist an officer's excessive force. People v. Curtis, 70 Cal. 2d 347, 74 Cal. Rptr. at 719. The Mulvihill court further warned that: [A citizen] cannot use greater force in protecting himself against the officer's unlawful force than reasonably appears to be necessary. If he employs such greater force, then he becomes the aggressor and forfeits the right to claim self-defense ... Furthermore, if he knows that if he desists from his physically defensive measures and submits to arrest the officer's unlawfully excessive force would cease, the arrestee must desist or lose his privilege of self-defense. The court said that the duty to desist and submit if that would stop the excessive force is analogous to the duty to retreat rather than use force in self defense when this is feasible. The Nolo Press page "Resisting Arrest When Police Use Excessive Force" says: It’s rare that someone being placed under arrest has the right to forcefully resist. But in most states, if the arresting officer uses excessive force that could cause “great bodily harm,” the arrestee has the right to defend him or herself. That’s because most states hold that an officer’s use of excessive force amounts to assault or battery, which a victim has a right to defend against. ... An officer’s use of force is “excessive” if it is likely to result in unjustifiable great bodily harm (serious injury). Most states consider whether a “reasonable person” under the circumstances would have believed that the officer’s use of force was likely to cause great physical harm (including death). If the answer is “yes”—if a reasonable person would have felt it necessary to resist in self-defense, and if that person used a reasonable degree of force when resisting, then the resistance is typically justified. But this is a very high standard to meet, such that courts hardly ever find that an arrestee’s forceful resistance was defensible. This article from policeone.com citing California law, says that forceful resistance to an arrest is almost never justified. It does agree that resistance to excessive force can be used; Section 693 requires that even if the officer were committing a public offense (crime), only that "self-defense" force that is sufficient to prevent the offense may be used. In other words, the subject may only use force to simply stop the assault/battery under color of authority and never any more than that. and says that: It is a rare circumstance when this assault/battery under color of authority actually occurs and an officer is charged, not because of some great law enforcement driven conspiracy but because it rarely happens. In short, Plummer is still valid, but limited to the fact pattern when the person being arrested is actually being subjected to excessive force likely to cause great bodily harm, or death, and only justifies sufficient force to prevent such harm. The lawfulness of the arrest does not matter, it the the danger caused by the excess force that justifies possible resistance. As a practical matter, if resistance is likely to escalate rather than prevent harm, it is highly unwise. When Plummer is cited, often with Bad Elk, to justify resistance to an unlawful arrest because of its unlawfulness, that is no longer valid law and has not been for decades. Note that is a person who is not a law enforcement officer (LEO) but who is pretending to be one, tries to make an "arrest" this would not be an arrest at all, but an assault or an attempted abduction, and the victim would be justified in using reasonable force in self-defense, although not excessive force. This is not the Plummer rule, but the normal law of self-defense. However any arrestee should be careful. Claiming that the arresters are impersonators when they are in fact plainclothes LEOs will not go well. If a reasonable person should have known that they were LEOs, there is no right to resist unless excessive force is used. Note further that if non-LEOs attempt to make a "citizen's arrest", not impersonating officers, the right to self-defence only applies if excessive force is used, or there is a reasonable fear of excessive force likely to cause great bodily harm or death. Basically the Plummer rule still applies. Also, all of this is a matter of state law, and while Plummer should be good law in most if not all states, the exact rule may vary by state. In 2012 a few US states retained the common-law rule that any unlawful arrest justified resistance, according to the Nolo page linked above. That may have changed, or may change when a case arises. The question does not specify a state, and a precise answer depends on the specific state.
You do have freedom of conscience but you do not have a blanket right to refuse work you were ordered to perform. You have to perform work you were ordered to perform. If you refuse, you can get an Abmahnung (disciplinary letter). A second Abmahmung would be grounds for firing. The Abmahnung is invalid if the work you refused would have been unreasonable – but you'd have to litigate this. Your freedom of conscience does affect what work you can be reasonably asked to perform. You have the burden of proof to show that the work would have been unreasonable. You are required to alert the employer in advance. If you took a job where you could reasonably have been expected to know that it might come into conflict with your conscience, you should have mentioned this during the interview. Taking the job anyway effectively waives your freedom of conscience. Of course this doesn't apply if your job changed after you were hired. If you successfully claim freedom of conscience, you are not entitled for pay for the work that you didn't perform. Here, your claim of freedom of conscience does not seem to stand on very strong footing. It is normal for web development to include analytics, ads, and social integrations (what you seem to call “trackers”). This is a bit like taking a job as a nurse and claiming “my conscience doesn't allow me to perform blood transfusions” or taking a job at a defense contractor and claiming “my conscience doesn't allow me to work on weapons”. Your personal conscience may be more strict than applicable laws, but don't forget that there are laws. You might reasonably see it as your professional obligation to alert stakeholders of their compliance obligations. You have a stronger case for refusing work than the difficult to prove “freedom of conscience” if the work you are asked to perform would be illegal. You'd have a stronger argument for exercising your freedom of conscience if your work would endanger users that live under oppressive governments.
This is the Texas law pertaining to self defense, which says that "a person is justified in using force against another when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to protect the actor against the other's use or attempted use of unlawful force". Relatively little of the law pertains to firearms, and none of it restricts the right to self-defense based on whether you are a resident, or you are using your own firearm vs. a borrowed one. The one provision, subsection (b)(5), that refers to firearms is an exception whereby force is not justified, namely if the actor sought an explanation from or discussion with the other person concerning the actor's differences with the other person while the actor was: (A) carrying a weapon in violation of Section 46.02; or (B) possessing or transporting a weapon in violation of Section 46.05. (Sect. 46.02 is about conditions unlawful carrying of weapons, which covers such things as under-age carrying of certain knives, or not having control of your weapon, or being a felon in possession, etc. 46.05 is about machine guns, explosives, zip guns etc.) Deadly force is covered by a separate section, 9.32, adding the requirement that the actor "reasonably believe[] the deadly force [to be] immediately necessary". (A) to protect the actor against the other's use or attempted use of unlawful deadly force; or (B) to prevent the other's imminent commission of aggravated kidnapping, murder, sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, robbery, or aggravated robbery. Note that "deadly force" is defined as "force that is intended or known by the actor to cause, or in the manner of its use or intended use is capable of causing, death or serious bodily injury". Sec. 9.33 likewise allows deadly force to be used analogously in defense of a third person, and intreestingly, in 9.34(b), "A person is justified in using both force and deadly force against another when and to the degree he reasonably believes the force or deadly force is immediately necessary to preserve the other's life in an emergency". In addition, deadly force can be justified in defense of property, per sec. 9.41, if you "reasonably believe[] the force [to be] immediately necessary to prevent or terminate the other's trespass on the land or unlawful interference with the property", and you may also use force to recover or re-enter the property (as long as the force is used "immediately or in fresh pursuit after the dispossession", and "the actor reasonably believes the other had no claim of right when he dispossessed the actor; or the other accomplished the dispossession by using force, threat, or fraud against the actor"). Sec. 9.42 then provides the possibility of justified use of deadly force in protection of property, if the force is immediately necessary (A) to prevent the other's imminent commission of arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, theft during the nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime; or (B) to prevent the other who is fleeing immediately after committing burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, or theft during the nighttime from escaping with the property; and (3) he reasonably believes that: (A) the land or property cannot be protected or recovered by any other means; or (B) the use of force other than deadly force to protect or recover the land or property would expose the actor or another to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury. The short version is, if deadly force is justified in the particular circumstances, then deadly force with a borrowed weapon is justified. However, there are federal laws regarding non-resident aliens possessing firearms. 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(5)(B) says that It shall be unlawful for any person...who, being an alien (A) is illegally or unlawfully in the United States; or (B) except as provided in subsection (y)(2), has been admitted to the United States under a nonimmigrant visa (as that term is defined in section 101(a)(26) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(26)))...to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce Under subsection (y) there are exceptions for licensed hunters, government representatives etc. You can also petition the Attorney General for an exception. The point is that federal law would make possession of a firearm illegal for most visa types: here is the list.