Military Lawyers on the Battlefield (AJIL):
The U.S. military has a long tradition of at least formal respect for the rule of law and the limits that the law of war places on soldiers. As far back as the U.S. Civil War, the U.S. Army published the Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field of 1863, known as the Lieber Code. The code set forth rules of conduct for U.S. military personnel that included limits on the use of force against civilians and requirements that detainees be treated humanely... Indeed, the Lieber Code helped spawn the branch of international humanitarian law that governs the law of hostilities, commonly known as Hague law. Following the Civil War, the U.S. Armed Forces embraced a culture of respect for law. The United States also played an active role in furthering the evolution of international humanitarian law from the Civil War to the period after World War II, which culminated in the adoption of the four Geneva Conventions in 1949 and the enactment of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (U.C.M.J.).
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