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Conscription: United States
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Conscription is the policy of making service in a country's armed forces compulsory. Countries which practice conscription have varying policies on who is eligible — certain ages are usually targeted, and some countries conscript only males. Sometimes, a country will conscript all people within its chosen parameters, or alternatively, it may conscript people from within those parameters randomly. It may be possible for conscripts to request a position as a non-combatant, or possibly to undertake some other form of service to the state in place of conscription.
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Conscription is a general term for involuntary labour demanded by some established authority, but it is most often used in the specific sense of government policies that require citizens (often just males) to serve in their armed forces. It is known by various names — for example, the most recent conscription program in the United States was known colloquially as "[T]he draft". Many nations do not maintain conscription forces, instead relying on a volunteer or professional military most of the time, although many of these countries still reserve the possibility of conscription for wartime and "crises" of supply.
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Conscription and its variants -- the press-gang prime among them -- are practiced by a wide range of actors, from states/regimes to local communities and guerrilla forces. Any human-rights abuses as part of a military conscription effort -- including associated violence against others in the population -- should be laid primarily at the door of the sponsoring authority (although it is the responsibility of every conscript soldier to obey the laws of war).
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Congress instituted the first peacetime use of conscription in 1940 when it passed the Selective Training and Service Act (54 Stat. 885). This act, which expired in 1947, enrolled those who served in U.S. armed forces during World War II. In 1948, Congress passed the Selective Service Act (50 U.S.C.A. app. § 451 et seq.), which was used to induct individuals for service in the Korean War (1950-53) and the Vietnam War (1954-75).
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Abstract : The thesis is an attempt to answer the question which asks: What is the rational moral justification for conscription in the modern democratic state? Chapter One sketches the philosophical roots of the traditional conception of conscription in America which holds that military service is an obligation or duty of the citizen. Chapter Two examines five major arguments which purport to establish the moral ground of a citizens obligation to support and comply with his government. Each argument is rejected in turn, thereby rejecting the view that citizens have any moral obligation to support their own government, and hence no obligation to serve in the military. Chapter Three examines the possibility that the state may be morally justified in conscripting, nonetheless. An argument is presented which establishes that in situations of clear national emergency or peril, the state is justified in conscripting its citizens for military service, thereby establishing some rational moral justification for conscription in the modern democratic state.
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President Reagan and Daniel Webster are not the only prominent Americans to oppose conscription. In fact, throughout American history the draft has been opposed by Americans from across the political spectrum, from Henry David Thoreau to Barry Goldwater to Bill Bradley to Jesse Ventura. Organizations opposed to conscription range from the American Civil Liberties Union to the United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society, and from the National Taxpayers Union to the Conservative Caucus. Other major figures opposing conscription include current Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman.
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