The Board of Veterans’ Appeals (BVA) is an administrative appeals board of the U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) that adjudicates U.S. military veterans’ claims regarding veteran benefits, such as disability compensation, medical...
military law
capital punishment
Capital punishment, which is also known as the death penalty, is criminal punishment that takes the defendant’s life as the punishment for the defendant’s crime. The sentence ordering capital punishment is called the death sentence, and the...
civilian
According to international humanitarian law, a civilian is any person who is not a member of a country’s armed forces. See this International Committee of the Red Cross database. One exception to this general rule is called “levee en masse,”...
command responsibility
Command responsibility is a jurisprudential doctrine in international criminal law permitting the prosecution of military commanders for war crimes perpetrated by their subordinates. The first legal implementations of command responsibility...
Commander in Chief powers
Article II Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, the Commander in Chief clause, states that "[t]he President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called...
Commerce Control List
In the interest of U.S. national security, the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) is responsible for implementing and enforcing the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), which regulate the export and re-export...
commodity classification request
A commodity classification request is when a company exporting goods internationally from the United States asks the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) to determine their products’ Export Control Classification Number (ECCN) under the...
conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is a person who refuses to bear arms or serve in the military based on a matter of conscience; rather, on moral, ethical, or religious grounds. In the United States, conscientious objections were raised in response to...
conscripting children
Conscripting is the act of enlisting individuals into the armed forces. Conscripting children is a war crime punishable by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The crime has the following elements:
The perpetrator enlisted the...court-martial
A court-martial is a legal proceeding where courts try a member of the military for offenses against military law. Courts-martial are governed by the provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), except as otherwise provided by...