UCMJ Article 120c: Other Sexual Misconduct
Article 120c of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, codified at 10 U.S.C. 920c, gathers a set of sexual offenses that do not fit the contact-based…
UCMJ Article 93a: Prohibited Activities With a Military Recruit or Trainee
Article 93a of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, codified at 10 U.S.C. 893a, makes it a criminal offense for a person in a position of…
UCMJ Article 131: Perjury
A court-martial, an Article 32 preliminary hearing, a court of inquiry, a deposition: each rests on the premise that a person who swears to tell the…
UCMJ Article 103: Spies
Article 103 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, codified at 10 U.S.C. 903, is the military's wartime spying offense. It reaches "any person who in…
UCMJ Article 134: Indecent Language
Indecent language is one of the offenses enumerated under Article 134, the Uniform Code of Military Justice's general article (10 U.S.C. 934). Unlike conduct that the…
UCMJ Article 112a: Wrongful Use, Possession, and Distribution of Controlled Substances
Article 112a is the engine of military drug enforcement. Codified at 10 U.S.C. 912a, it makes it a crime for anyone subject to the Uniform Code…
UCMJ Article 77: Principals
Article 77 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, codified at 10 U.S.C. 877, answers a question that decides who can be punished for a crime…
UCMJ Article 82: Solicitation
Article 82, codified at 10 U.S.C. 882, makes it a crime to solicit or advise another person to commit an offense under the Uniform Code of…
UCMJ Article 90: Willfully Disobeying a Superior Commissioned Officer
Article 90 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice criminalizes the willful disobedience of a lawful command given by a superior commissioned officer. Codified at 10…
UCMJ Article 109: Waste, Spoilage, or Destruction of Non-Military Property
Article 109 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, codified at 10 U.S.C. 909, is the property-protection offense that points outward, away from the armed forces.…
UCMJ Article 131a: Subornation of Perjury
Perjury corrupts a proceeding from the witness stand. Subornation of perjury corrupts it one step earlier, from behind the scenes, by the person who arranges for…
UCMJ Article 108a: Captured or Abandoned Property
When a unit overruns an enemy position, takes a depot, or moves through territory that the enemy has left behind, it encounters property that belongs to…
UCMJ Article 92: Failure to Obey Order or Regulation
Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, codified at 10 U.S.C. 892, is the workhorse of military discipline. It criminalizes three related but distinct…
UCMJ Article 109a: Mail Matter Offenses
Tampering with mail in the armed forces is now its own punitive offense. In the current Uniform Code of Military Justice, the wrongful taking, opening, secreting,…
UCMJ Article 101: Improper Use of Countersign
A countersign is one of the oldest tools of military security: a secret word or signal that lets a sentinel tell friend from foe in the…
UCMJ Article 105: Forgery
A military pay system, a personnel file, a leave authorization, and a security credential all share one quiet assumption: that the signature and the document mean…
UCMJ Article 102: Forcing a Safeguard
Few punitive articles in the Uniform Code of Military Justice are as short, as old, or as severe as Article 102. The statute is a single…
UCMJ Article 87b: Offenses Against Correctional Custody and Restriction
Article 87b gathers three related offenses into a single provision: escaping from correctional custody, breaching correctional custody, and breaking restriction. What ties them together is not…
UCMJ Article 130: Stalking
The number attached to this offense is itself a small case study in how military criminal law has changed. For most of the Uniform Code of…
UCMJ Article 131c: Misprision of a Serious Offense
Misprision of a serious offense is one of the few crimes in military law that punishes concealment rather than participation. A service member who had nothing…
UCMJ Article 108: Military Property of the United States: Loss, Damage, Destruction, or Wrongful Disposition
Every weapon, vehicle, radio, and tool issued to a service member is a public asset bought with public money for the purpose of national defense. The…
UCMJ Article 127: Extortion
Extortion is the crime of turning a threat into a transaction. Article 127 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, codified at 10 U.S.C. 927, makes…
UCMJ Article 131e: Prevention of Authorized Seizure of Property
When investigators move to seize property, whether contraband, evidence of a crime, or items subject to forfeiture, the law expects that property to remain available for…
UCMJ Article 89: Disrespect Toward and Assault of a Superior Commissioned Officer
Article 89 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice protects the authority and person of a superior commissioned officer in two distinct ways. Codified at 10…