[mafm]

Acoording to ethics class during basic training in the Australian army, the key difference between soldiers and civilians is that military personnel are under a legal obligation to follow all lawful orders. The class highlighted that police are (by definition) civilian because police are only obligated to obey reasonable orders.

So a soldier refusing to carry out a lawful order that would result in near-certain death is guilty of a crime. A cop refusing to carry out the same order is entirely within their rights.

And then there was also a lot of discussion of the difference between lawful and unlawful orders, My Lai, Nazi Germany, etc.

Some Australian police recently refused to deal with people who had covid-19, because they argued it was unreasonably dangerous.

At least in theory, military personnel are held to a much higher ethical standard than civilian police.

[k__]

A lawful order doesn't have to be reasonable? Why?

[bryanrasmussen]

"Johnson, stand here and guard the road against the approaching enemy" is a lawful order, but it may not be reasonable under many different interpretations.

[mafm]

Because being ordered to do something that might get you killed isn't reasonable.

[oehtXRwMkIs]

Because lawful means based on law, and laws aren't always reasonable or even ethical.

[VLM]

This is pretty basic military law that a lawful order has a valid military purpose and is a clear and specific (and its generally documented in writing although verbal lawful orders do exist).

Reasonable is in the sense of proportionate such as "reasonable force". Would a reasonable person do X Y or Z to reach a lawful goal?

If you're guarding a nuclear bunker and there are signs everywhere about deadly force authorized and someone tries to break in, its a lawful order to shoot them although if they're a pizza deliveryman it may not be a reasonable order; although lets be realistic pizza deliverymen don't normally break into nuclear bunkers, so its perfectly reasonable to shoot a deliveryman-impersonator commando.

A very off the cuff and unfair comparison is the people who decide acceptability of lawful orders are skilled knowledgeable bureaucrat lawyer types implementing the details of written laws and regs and higher level orders, whereas the people who decide reasonableness of orders are usually on the knowledge level of jury members. Or lawful orders are in the arena of goals, whereas reasonable orders are in the arena of how to do it.

[im3w1l]

"Tell me what happened, without using any words containing the letter e, while standing on one leg"

This is clearly not an order to break any rules or laws. It's also silly and unreasonable.

[zip1234]

A military unit may have to go do something with high casualties in order to achieve a higher objective.