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Draft boards are a part of the Selective Service System which register and select men of military age in the event of conscription in the United States.
The local draft board is a board that administers and executes the main provisions of the Selective Service Act. Its functions comprise the registration, rejection and selection of men of military age as fixed by legislative enactment. It is also responsible to the government for the part of mobilization up to arrival in camp, of those who "passed" and are "called". A local draft board has jurisdiction over a prescribed territory determined by population. Larger cities had fifty or more local draft boards.
A district appeal board is established in each Congressional district and hears appeals from the decisions of the local draft boards. A final appeal from the district boards' decisions could be made to the President of the United States.
Conscription is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day under various names. The modern system of near-universal national conscription for young men dates to the French Revolution in the 1790s, where it became the basis of a very large and powerful military. Most European nations later copied the system in peacetime, so that men at a certain age would serve 1–8 years on active duty and then transfer to the reserve force.
The Selective Service System (SSS) is an independent agency of the United States government that maintains information on U.S. citizens and other U.S. residents potentially subject to military conscription and carries out contingency planning and preparations for two types of draft: a general draft based on registration lists of men aged 18–25, and a special-skills draft based on professional licensing lists of workers in specified health care occupations. In the event of either type of draft, the Selective Service System would send out induction notices, adjudicate claims for deferments or exemptions, and assign draftees classified as conscientious objectors to alternative service work. All male U.S. citizens and immigrant non-citizens who are between the ages of 18 and 25 are required by law to have registered within 30 days of their 18th birthdays, and must notify the Selective Service within ten days of any changes to any of the information they provided on their registration cards, such as a change of address. The Selective Service System is a contingency mechanism for the possibility that conscription becomes necessary.
In the United States, military conscription, commonly known as the draft, has been employed by the U.S. federal government in six conflicts: the American Revolutionary War, the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. The fourth incarnation of the draft came into being in 1940, through the Selective Training and Service Act. It was the country's first peacetime draft. From 1940 until 1973, during both peacetime and periods of conflict, men were drafted to fill vacancies in the U.S. Armed Forces that could not be filled through voluntary means. Active conscription in the United States ended in 1973, when the U.S. Armed Forces moved to an all-volunteer military. However, conscription remains in place on a contingency basis and all male U.S. citizens, regardless of where they live, and male immigrants, whether documented or undocumented, residing within the United States, who are 18 through 25 are required to register with the Selective Service System. United States federal law also continues to provide for the compulsory conscription of men between the ages of 17 and 44 who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, U.S. citizens, and certain women for militia service pursuant to Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution and 10 U.S. Code § 246.
United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court, ruling that a criminal prohibition against burning a draft card did not violate the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech. Though the court recognized that O'Brien's conduct was expressive as a protest against the Vietnam War, it considered the law justified by a significant government interest unrelated to the suppression of speech and was tailored towards that end.
The term Solomon Amendment has been applied to several provisions of U.S. law originally sponsored by U.S. Representative Gerald B. H. Solomon (R-NY).
The Selective Service Act of 1917 or Selective Draft Act authorized the United States federal government to raise a national army for service in World War I through conscription. It was envisioned in December 1916 and brought to President Woodrow Wilson's attention shortly after the break in relations with Germany in February 1917. The Act itself was drafted by then-Captain Hugh S. Johnson after the United States entered World War I by declaring war on Germany. The Act was canceled with the end of the war on November 11, 1918. The Act was upheld as constitutional by the United States Supreme Court in 1918.
Lewis Blaine Hershey was a United States Army general who served as the second Director of the Selective Service System, the means by which the United States administers its military conscription.
Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court split on the First Amendment issue of local school boards removing library books from junior high schools and high schools. Four Justices ruled that it was unconstitutional, four Justices concluded the contrary, and one Justice concluded that the court need not decide the question on the merits. Pico was the first Supreme Court case to consider the right to receive information in a library setting under the First Amendment, but the court's fractured plurality decision left the scope of this right unclear.
The National Coalition for Men (NCFM), formerly the National Coalition of Free Men, is a non-profit educational and civil rights organization which aims to address the ways sex discrimination affects men and boys. The organization has sponsored conferences, adult education, demonstrations and lawsuits. NCFM is the United States' oldest generalist men's rights organization. It professes to being politically neutral, neither conservative nor liberal.
Rostker v. Goldberg, 453 U.S. 57 (1981), is a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States holding that the practice of requiring only men to register for the draft was constitutional. After extensive hearings, floor debate and committee sessions on the matter, the United States Congress reauthorized the law, as it had previously been, to apply to men only. Several attorneys, including Robert L. Goldberg, subsequently challenged the Act as gender distinction. In a 6–3 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the Act, holding that its gender distinction was not a violation of the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
Gray Hampton Miller is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, also known as the Burke–Wadsworth Act, Pub. L. 76–783, 54 Stat. 885, enacted September 16, 1940, was the first peacetime conscription in United States history. This Selective Service Act required that men who had reached their 21st birthday but had not yet reached their 36th birthday register with local draft boards. Later, when the U.S. entered World War II, all men from their 18th birthday until the day before their 45th birthday were made subject to military service, and all men from their 18th birthday until the day before their 65th birthday were required to register.
Clay v. United States, 403 U.S. 698 (1971), was Muhammad Ali's appeal of his conviction in 1967 for refusing to report for induction into the United States military forces during the Vietnam War. His local draft board had rejected his application for conscientious objector classification. In a unanimous 8–0 ruling, the United States Supreme Court reversed the conviction that had been upheld by the Fifth Circuit.
Holmes v. United States, 391 U.S. 936 (1968), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States denied a petition for writ of certiorari to a Jehovah's Witnesses minister who asked the Court to decide whether a draft of men into the Armed Forces in times of peace is constitutionally permissible. The minister argued that, in the absence of a declaration of war, a draft was not authorized and was equivalent to involuntary servitude.
The Selective Service Act of 1948, also known as the Elston Act, was a major revision of the Articles of War of the United States enacted June 24, 1948 that established the current implementation of the Selective Service System.
Draft-card burning was a symbol of protest performed by thousands of young men in the United States and Australia in the 1960s and early 1970s. The first draft-card burners were American men taking part in the opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War. The first well-publicized protest was in December 1963, with a 22-year old conscientious objector, Eugene Keyes, setting fire to his card on Christmas Day in Champaign, Illinois. In May 1964, a larger demonstration, with about 50 people in Union Square, New York, was organized by the War Resisters League chaired by David McReynolds.
Elgin v. Department of the Treasury, 567 U.S. 1 (2012), was a United States Supreme Court case where the Court ruled that the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA) gives exclusive jurisdiction for claims under the Act to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Additionally, the Court held that the Act bars federal district courts from ruling on matters related to the act including adverse employment actions of the federal departments, and allows the Merit Systems Protection Board to hear constitutional arguments for wrongful employee severance and adverse employment actions. It was a 6–3 decision, with the majority opinion delivered by Justice Clarence Thomas. The case greatly limited the recourse of federal employees to the courts for adverse employment practices, allowing such recourse only to a few, specific courts as aforementioned.
Conscription, sometimes called "the draft", is the compulsory enlistment of people in a national service, most often a military service. Historically, men have been subjected to military drafts in the most cases. Currently only two countries conscript women and men on the same formal conditions: Norway and Sweden.
The Hershey Directive was a memorandum sent in October, 1967, from Lewis Blaine Hershey, Director of the U.S. Selective Service System, to local draft boards recommending that local boards reclassify registrants who had "abandoned or mutilated" their draft cards as 1-A-delinquent, the highest classification. Two days later, he sent a letter to the boards expanding on the memorandum, suggesting that they reclassify Selective Service registrants as delinquent if they were in violation of any of the Selective Service Act or Regulations. The New York Times published the text of both documents on November 9, 1967.
National Coalition for Men v. Selective Service System was a court case that was first decided in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas on February 22, 2019, declaring that requiring men but disallowing women to register for the draft for military service in the United States was unconstitutional. The ruling did not specify which actions the government needed to take to resolve the conflict with the constitution. That ruling was reversed by the Fifth Circuit.
This article incorporates text from the Teachers' monographs: Plans and details of grade work, a publication now in the public domain.