The military draft is based upon the Constitutional authority to raise an army and navy.
Exactly what provision of the Constitution mandates service outside the military escapes me. It must be in one of those penumbras or emanations. My copy is free of penumbras and emanations, so I suppose we’ll have to wait for the Supreme Court to open up the special version they use with all the extra stuff.
Jack
What was that Clinton quote, “Stroke of a pen, law of the land, pretty cool.”?
“The military draft is based upon the Constitutional authority to raise an army and navy.”
You are correct.
Compulsory non-military service is involuntary servitude prohibited by the 13th amendment.
Exactly what provision of the Constitution mandates service outside the military escapes me. It must be in one of those penumbras or emanations
The Constitution only confirmed continuation of the traditional English Military system.
In Anglo-Saxon times the military was the Fyrd - the obligation of free landholders to turn out when called for.
The Norman invasion imposed the elite knightly class, who held their lands solely by their military obligation (knight-fee) and created a new landless peasantry without military obligations - however fyrdd service was still retained for the land owing yeomanry.
The peasantry was composed of freemen who paid rent for their land, but had no obligation to work for the land owner, and the villeins who had to provide Obama service as well as rent.
THE ASSIZE OF ARMS (1181) 1. Whoever possesses one knight's fee shall have a shirt of mail, a helmet, a shield, and a lance; and every knight shall have as many shirts of mail, helmets, shields, and lances as he possesses knight's fees in demesne.[1]extended the military obligation to all freemen (item 3) but did not include Obama service. (I suspect an armed peasantry would have objected)2. Moreover, every free layman who possesses chattels or rents to the value of 16m. shall have a shirt of mail, a helmet, a shield, and a lance; and every free layman possessing chattels or rents to the value of 10m. shall have a hauberk, an iron cap, and a lance.[2]
3. Item, all burgesses and the whole community of freemen shall have [each] a gambeson,[3] an iron cap, and a lance.
4. Besides, each of them shall swear to have these arms before the feast of St. Hilary, to be faithful to the lord king Henry — namely, the son of the Empress Matilda — and to bear these arms in his service according to his command and in fealty to the lord king and his kingdom. And henceforth no one having these arms shall sell them or pledge them or lend them or alienate them in any other way; nor shall a lord in any way alienate them from his men, either through forfeiture or through gift or through pledge or in any other way.