Abstract
In order to keep America’s armed forces deadly, ESC must be decriminalized. The MCM’s 2019 update to start including non-heterosexual marriages and affairs tragically expands the reach of ESC. This Note presents new data on charging patterns of ESC in the Marines, highlighting the crime’s active use. ESC continues to overcompensate for behavior prejudicial to good order and discipline or service discrediting; this overcompensation results in subjecting non-prejudicial and non-service-discrediting behavior to criminal action, simultaneously infringing on service members’ constitutional rights and serving as fodder for public outcry. Military leaders should decriminalize ESC and alternatively penalize the behavior by administrative action or Administrative Separation. It’s time to save Private Unfaithful.
Recommended Citation
Annelise Burgess, Saving Private Unfaithful: An Argument for Administrative Separation and Action in Lieu of Criminalizing Extramarital Sexual Conduct, 82 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. Online 410 (2025), https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlulr-online/vol82/iss5/1
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Criminal Law Commons, Family Law Commons, Military, War, and Peace Commons, Sexuality and the Law Commons