Selective Draft Law Cases, 245 U.S. 366 (1918)

Selective Draft Law Cases

Nos. 663

, 664

, 665

, 666

, 681

, 769

Argued December 13, 14, 1917
Decided January 7, 1918 GO>*
245 U.S. 366

ERROR TO THE DISTRICT COURTS OF THE UNITED STATES

FOR THE DISTRICT OF MINNESOTA AND THE SOUTHERN

DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

Syllabus

The grant to Congress of power to raise and support armies, considered in conjunction with the grants of the powers to declare war, to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces, and to make laws necessary and proper for executing granted powers (Constitution, Art. I, § 8), includes the power to compel military service, exercised by the Selective Draft Law of May 18, 1917, c. 15, 40 Stat. 76. This conclusion, obvious upon the face of the Constitution, is confirmed by an historical examination of the subject.

The army power, combining the powers vested in the Congress and the States under the Confederation, embraces the complete military power of government, as is manifested not only by the grant made, but by the express limitation of Art. I, § 10, prohibiting the States, without the consent of Congress, from keeping troops in time of peace or engaging in war.

The militia power reserved to the States by the militia clause (Art. I, § 8), while separate and distinct in its field, and while serving to diminish occasion for exercising the army power, is subject to be restricted in, or even deprived of, its area of operation through the army power, according to the extent to which Congress, in its discretion, finds necessity for calling the latter into play.

The service which may be exacted of the citizen under the army power is not limited to the specific purposes for which Congress is expressly authorized, by the militia clause, to call the militia; the presence in the Constitution of such express regulations affords no basis for an inference that the army power, when exerted, is not complete and dominant to the extent of its exertion.

Compelled military service is neither repugnant to a free government nor in conflict with the constitutional guaranties of individual liberty. Indeed, it may not be doubted that the very conception of a just government and its duty to the citizen includes the duty of the citizen to render military service in case of need, and the right of the government to compel it.

The power of Congress to compel military service as in the Selective Draft Law, clearly sustained by the original Constitution, is even more manifest under the Fourteenth Amendment, which, as frequently has been pointed out, broadened the national scope of the government by causing citizenship of the United States to be paramount and dominant, instead of being subordinate and derivative, thus operating generally upon the powers conferred by the Constitution.

The constitutionality of the Selective Draft Law also is upheld against the following objections: (1) That, by some of its administrative features, it delegates federal power to state officials; (2) that it vests both legislative and judicial power in administrative officers; (3) that, by exempting ministers of religion and theological students under certain conditions and by relieving from strictly military service members of certain religious sects whose tenets deny the moral right to engage in war, it is repugnant to the First Amendment, as establishing or interfering with religion, and (4) that it creates involuntary servitude in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Affirmed.

The cases are stated in the opinion.