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This chapter illustrates how the counterstrategies of rope-a-dope and transnational legal process have played out since the start of the Trump Administration. The outside strategy of domestic litigation has been combined with other forms of external and internal pressure from many stakeholders in a wideranging effort to resist President Donald Trump’s draconian immigration policies, particularly the Travel Ban, or Muslim Ban. The chapter also describes the core strategy of internalized bureaucratic resistance to efforts to reimpose torture as an “enhanced interrogation tactic.” This counterstrategy, which gives meaning to the slogan “This is what democracy looks like,” will likely continue whether or not the Trump Administration successfully defends its immigration policies in the courts.

This chapter outlines the military justice system. In doing so, the chapter explains why the military maintains a separate justice system—regulated by what is often referred to as “military law,” highlights its novel aspects, and discusses contemporary challenges. Using vignettes and historical examples the chapter begins by outlining the foundations of the system. It then moves into a discussion on the sources of authority for the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Manual for Courts-Martial, and uses case studies to explain how the system works. The chapter also offers unique insights in practicing military justice in a deployed environment and the importance of maintaining command responsibility over the system. The chapter concludes that, despite ongoing criticism, there remains an overwhelming need for an independent military justice system.

This chapter argues that the US-led war in Vietnam (1955–1975) paved the way for institutional changes in the US military, including the establishment of the US Law of War Program, which later precipitated the emergence of a new doctrinal approach to the laws of war called ‘operational law’. Military lawyers emerged from the Vietnam War better equipped and with a formal mandate to advise military commanders on the legality of targeting operations. Military lawyers performed a wide range of duties in Vietnam, especially around Prisoner of War (POW) issues, and were deployed in unprecedented numbers. Military lawyers were not involved in targeting, neither during ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’ nor ‘Operation Linebacker’, but the Vietnam War in general and the My Lai massacre of 1968 in particular helped to create the conditions for their involvement in subsequent wars.