Starfleet regulations

From Star Trek: Gamma One

Mission Codes

Mission Codes are regulatory codes which identify a mission type for Mission Operations and covert or tactical communications purposes. These are standardized.

Conscientious Objection

Starfleet recognizes that officers acting in its name must be seen as moral actors as well as warfighters, scientists, diplomats, and all of the other role-based hats they wear. Accordingly, Starfleet recognizes a non-absolute-but-nevertheless-protected right of an officer to refuse an order which might otherwise on its face be or seem legal, but which shocks the conscience of the actor because of a perceived lack of morals or ethics in the order. In effect, when exercising this right, the officer's reply to the order must be something as close as possible to "Sir, I believe that an immoral or unconscionable order, and I decline to obey it." While this may sound simple in principle, there are the following limitations and considerations which apply:

• 1) This is not an absolute defense against all penalties. It does not shield one from investigation by authorities later should the commanding officer weigh charges (nor, on an OOC basis, from renown hits). It is simply an affirmative defense against the charge of refusal to obey a direct order from a superior officer, should such a charge be filed.
  • 1A) This is not meant to give a junior officer grounds to raise an intellectual dispute about the legality of an order to the level of a legal defense. Legality is not what is in question, as in many cases (such as General Order conflicts), such would be outside the junior officer's competence and legal authority to dispute. It is a shield against being forced to commit acts one finds morally repugnant or absolutely unconscionable. As a result, and because it is an affirmative defense, any statements otherwise made by the junior officer who has claimed the defense, which might cast into doubt any reasonable person's interpretation of his or her actual moral values in the matter will be scrutinized, and any statements which stray from the defense substantially to make the matter in question (for example) an exercise in debate on the lawfulness of an order, or an exercise in psychological warfare with a disliked superior officer, or simply an exercise in imposing one's own judgement on a situation where one disagrees with the commanding officer, will result in nullification of the defense.
  • 1B) Only orders which are the direct and immediate cause of the moral quandary may be disputed. e.g., should the commanding officer decide that the course of action in the rescue of an away team is to launch a minimum-yield torpedo in an orbital-to-ground bombardment as a distraction and weapon of intimidation, during which bombardment the mission operations officer is to use the breach in the planet's shields to rescue the away team by transporter and the flight control officer is to break orbit and flee, the decision to invoke this defense and refuse the order would come from the tactical officer who has been ordered to fire the torpedo, and only that officer has the valid defense for his or her refusal to take the ordered action. Other officers who simply think the dissenting officer has 'a better take' than the commanding officer should recognize that this grey area can lead to mutiny, and that the conscientious objection defense is not a defense for mutiny. In this example given above, any bridge officer on duty, or even the members of the rescued away team, might have grounds to complain later to JAG about the Captain's Orders being a potential breach of General Order Ten, but Starfleet Regulations put the at-the-time decision in the hands of that commanding officer, and so, again, legality is not the question, merely the moral effect of executing the specific act on the specific actors.
• 2) Invoking this affirmative defense of conscientious objection effectively means that the junior officer in question is relieving himself or herself of duty. The junior officer, upon stating the disagreement, must then stand aside for another officer to take the ordered action. At that point, it is at the sole and active discretion of the commanding officer as to whether the objecting officer may remain at his or her post -- if an affirmative statement from the commanding officer permitting the officer to do so is not forthcoming in immediate response, the objecting officer is to consider himself relieved of duty, and is to withdraw from the duty area immediately.
  • 2A) Regardless of whether the officer is affirmatively permitted to remain in the duty area by the commanding officer, or obliged to withdraw by lack of such affirmation, the officer has, by making the conscientious objection defense, relieved himself or herself of any further permission to take action in the matter at hand -- refusing to obey an order because you find it immoral or unconscionable is permissible, but following through with an immediate substitution of a different course of action because you feel you know better than the person assigned to command is not a lawful act and is not protected by the defense of conscientious objection.
  • 2B) Lastly, and very importantly, should there be no other personnel capable in a reasonable manner dictated by time and place to execute the issued order in the objector's stead, the objector must carry out the order, with his or her objections noted in the record.