Solicitation in the military is the act of seriously asking, advising, or counseling another person to commit a crime, with the intent that the crime actually be committed. The natural question for a commander or a defense attorney is whether urging a fellow service member to disobey a general order fits within Article 82 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). The short answer is yes, because the modern version of Article 82 reaches solicitation of any offense under the Code, and disobeying a general order is an offense under Article 92. But the path to that answer changed in 2019, and the distinction between the old and new statute matters for how these cases are charged.
What Article 82 used to cover
For most of its history, Article 82, codified at 10 U.S.C. section 882, was a narrow provision. It punished soliciting or advising another to commit only four specific offenses: desertion under Article 85, mutiny under Article 94, misbehavior before the enemy under Article 99, and sedition under Article 94. Under that older text, encouraging someone to violate a routine general order did not fit Article 82 at all, because disobedience of a general order was not one of the four enumerated crimes. Prosecutors instead reached such conduct through the general aiding-and-abetting principle of Article 77 or, if the encouragement helped produce an actual violation, through accomplice liability for the completed offense.
What the Military Justice Act changed
The Military Justice Act of 2016, whose provisions took effect on January 1, 2019, rewrote Article 82 into a general solicitation statute. As amended, Article 82 punishes any person subject to the Code who solicits or advises another to commit an offense under the Code. The article retains heightened treatment for the most serious offenses, but it is no longer limited to the original four. The result is that solicitation now covers the full range of UCMJ offenses, including violation of a general order under Article 92.
This is the key development. Because disobeying a lawful general order or regulation is itself an offense under Article 92, soliciting another person to do so now falls within Article 82’s general reach. So for conduct occurring on or after January 1, 2019, encouraging someone to violate a general order can be charged as solicitation under Article 82.
The elements the government must prove
To convict under the general solicitation provision, the prosecution must establish that the accused solicited or advised a particular person or persons to commit an offense under the Code, and that the accused did so with the specific intent that the offense actually be committed. Two features deserve emphasis.
First, the offense is complete at the moment of the solicitation. The person solicited does not have to agree, and the underlying offense does not have to occur. If the solicited offense is in fact committed or attempted as a result of the solicitation, the law treats that as an aggravating circumstance affecting punishment, but it is not required for guilt.
Second, the mental state is specific intent. A casual gripe, a sarcastic remark, or general grumbling about an unpopular regulation is not solicitation. The accused must genuinely intend that the listener actually break the order. This intent requirement is the principal battleground, because the line between venting and seriously counseling a violation is often a question of context, tone, and surrounding conduct.
The order itself must be a valid one
A solicitation-to-violate-a-general-order charge has a built-in dependency: the order must be one that it is actually an offense to disobey. Article 92 covers lawful general orders and regulations, meaning orders properly issued by competent authority, relating to a military duty, and not contrary to the Constitution, statutes, or higher regulation. If the underlying order is unlawful, then disobeying it is not an offense, and soliciting that disobedience cannot be solicitation of an Article 92 violation. A defense attorney should therefore scrutinize the order’s validity, scope, and applicability to the person allegedly being urged to disobey it.
Solicitation compared with related theories
It is worth distinguishing solicitation from neighboring doctrines, because the same words can trigger different charges. Aiding and abetting under Article 77 makes a person liable as a principal when the underlying offense is actually committed with the person’s assistance or encouragement. Conspiracy under Article 81 requires an agreement between two or more people plus an overt act. Solicitation under Article 82 is different from both: it punishes the asking itself, regardless of whether anyone agrees or acts. That is why solicitation can be charged even when the plan never gets off the ground, and why it is a useful tool for addressing instigators who try to push others into misconduct.
Bottom line
Yes. Under the current version of Article 82, effective for conduct on or after January 1, 2019, encouraging another service member to violate a lawful general order can constitute solicitation, because the statute now reaches solicitation of any UCMJ offense and disobedience of a general order is an offense under Article 92. The government must prove that the accused seriously advised or asked the other person to disobey and did so intending the violation to occur, and the underlying order must itself be lawful. For conduct before 2019, the older, narrower Article 82 did not cover general-order violations, so the timing of the alleged solicitation is the first thing to check.
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.
Reading this article, or contacting any website on which it appears, does not create an attorney-client relationship between the reader and any law firm, attorney, or author. Every court-martial, nonjudicial punishment action, administrative separation, and security-clearance matter turns on its own facts, the charged articles, the convening authority, the service branch, and the evidence, and outcomes vary widely from one case to another.
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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