Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice makes it an offense for a commissioned officer to use contemptuous words against certain officials. As more officers maintain personal blogs, email newsletters, and social media accounts, a recurring question arises: does writing on these personal platforms count as the kind of expression that can be charged under Article 88, even when the officer thinks of it as a private outlet? The short answer is that the platform’s label matters far less than whether the words reached someone other than the speaker and whether they were truly contemptuous.
What Article 88 actually prohibits
Article 88 applies only to commissioned officers. Enlisted members cannot be convicted under it, although their similar speech may be addressed under other articles. The statute makes punishable the use of contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Commonwealth, or possession in which the officer is on duty or present.
To obtain a conviction, the prosecution must prove that the accused was a commissioned officer, that the accused used certain words against an official or legislature named in the article, that by an act of the accused those words came to the knowledge of a person other than the accused, and that the words were contemptuous, either in themselves or by the circumstances in which they were used. The third element, that the words reached someone else, is the one that makes the blog-and-newsletter question turn out the way it does.
Public and private capacity are not the dividing line
A common misconception is that Article 88 reaches only formal, public statements and exempts anything an officer labels personal. The article does not draw that line. It is immaterial whether the words were used in an official or a private capacity. What the statute requires is that the words be contemptuous and that, through some act of the accused, they become known to another person. An officer cannot insulate contemptuous words simply by calling the platform personal.
That said, the practical treatment of purely private communication differs from the treatment of disseminated communication. Opinions expressed in a genuinely private conversation are rarely charged, and the authorities recognize that such purely private remarks ordinarily should not be charged. The reason is not that private speech is categorically exempt, but that private remarks usually fail or weaken the element requiring the words to come to the knowledge of others, and they lack the aggravating reach that makes disseminated contempt damaging to good order.
Why blogs and newsletters fall on the public side
A personal blog post or an email newsletter is fundamentally different from a private conversation precisely on the element that matters most. When an officer publishes a blog entry or sends a newsletter, the officer’s own act causes the words to reach an audience beyond the officer. A blog is, by design, readable by others. A newsletter is, by design, distributed to a list of recipients. In both cases the publication-and-distribution element is satisfied by the officer’s deliberate act of posting or sending.
Because of this, statements that achieve wide circulation through writing or social media are more likely to be prosecuted than offhand private remarks, and broad circulation can be treated as an aggravating factor. A blog with public readership or a newsletter with a sizable subscriber base supplies exactly the kind of dissemination that distinguishes chargeable contempt from the private musing the authorities would ordinarily leave alone. The personal character of the platform does not shrink the audience; publishing expands it.
The separate question of whether the words are contemptuous
Even where dissemination is clear, Article 88 still requires that the words themselves be contemptuous. Not all criticism qualifies. Adverse criticism of an official or a legislature offered in the course of a political discussion, even if expressed emphatically, may fall short of the article if it is not personally contemptuous. There is a meaningful difference between vigorous policy disagreement and language that holds an official up to scorn, derision, or disdain. The line is drawn at contempt, not at the intensity of disagreement.
This is why the content of a blog post matters as much as the fact of its publication. An officer who writes a pointed but respectful policy critique stands on different ground than one who publishes scornful, personally contemptuous attacks on a named official within the article’s protected list. The forum being a personal blog or newsletter neither rescues the latter nor condemns the former; it simply confirms that the words were made known to others.
The takeaway for officers who publish
For a commissioned officer, the realistic understanding is this. Calling a blog or newsletter personal does not place it outside Article 88. Because publishing inherently broadcasts words to an audience, these platforms supply the dissemination element readily, and wide circulation can aggravate rather than excuse the conduct. The protection that remains lies in the nature of the words themselves, since respectful, non-contemptuous criticism is treated differently from contemptuous attacks. Officers who write publicly should assume their words are public expression for Article 88 purposes and weigh their content accordingly.
Disclaimer
This article is provided strictly for general educational and informational purposes. It is intended to explain how the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), the Rules for Courts-Martial, the Military Rules of Evidence, and related military administrative processes work as a matter of public legal education. It does not constitute legal advice, a legal opinion, or a recommendation about any particular case, and it is not a substitute for advice from a qualified military defense attorney who can evaluate the specific facts and command, service, and jurisdictional circumstances involved.
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Military law also changes over time. The Military Justice Act of 2016 (effective January 1, 2019) and subsequent National Defense Authorization Acts renumbered and rewrote many punitive articles, revised the Article 32 preliminary hearing, and altered sentencing, clemency, and appellate procedures. Statutes, regulations, executive orders, the Manual for Courts-Martial, and decisions of the service Courts of Criminal Appeals and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces may have been amended, superseded, or reinterpreted after this article was written, and article numbers or procedures cited here may have changed.
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