Selective Service

Selective Service

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

THE SELECTIVE SERVICE IN THE EARLY-TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

During major military conflicts in which the United States has been involved throughout its history, the government has utilized various programs and forms of military conscription in order to draft male citizens to the armed forces. While no draft has been in place since 1973, the Selective Service exists as an independent agency within the federal government to administer the registration of eighteen-year-old males, which is required by law, and conduct a draft should a need for military manpower over and above a volunteer force arise. An individual who is appointed by the president of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate directs the Selective Service System.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Congress passed the first military conscription act on March 3, 1863, during the Civil War. The act authorized President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) to draft men between the ages of twenty and forty-five into military service for the Union forces. The law, which included the option of draftees to pay a commutation fee of $300 to escape enlistment, provoked protests in New York City by those who saw it as unfairly protecting the wealthy.

Lincoln was forced to send federal troops to quell violent mobs. The Confederate States also instituted conscription in 1862, and it proved just as unpopular in the South as in the North. The next military draft law in the United States was passed in 1917; the Selective Service Act gave the president the power to conscript men for service during World War I.

As American involvement in World War II approached, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) signed the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. This act created the first peacetime draft and established the Selective Service as an independent federal agency. The original legislation called for a service commitment of twelve months but was expanded to eighteen months following direct U.S. engagement in hostilities. Men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five who registered with the Selective Service were eligible to be inducted into the army and Marine Corps, and more than 10,000,000 men were inducted between 1940 and 1947. New legislation in 1948 reduced the mandatory registration age range to between eighteen and twenty-six. Military conscription continued during the Korean War in the 1950s and, most notably and controversially, during the Vietnam War.

Beginning in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) was authorized by Congress to increase the number of troops in Vietnam, and by early 1968 the United States had more than 500,000 troops there. Tens of thousands of young men were drafted through the Selective Service lottery, while thousands of others avoided service through exemptions—also called deferments—granted by the several regional Selective Service draft boards around the nation based on educational commitments, membership in the clergy, medical restrictions, membership in the National Guard, and other obligations. Critics of the draft process noted an inordinate number of minorities had been selected, and questioned the randomness of the lottery. As in the past, the draft was seen as unfairly singling out those without the economic means to avoid service. As the number of U.S. soldiers killed in action rose and the war became increasingly unpopular, the draft became a focal point for antiwar protestors. In 1973 President Richard M. Nixon (1913–1994) signed legislation that ended the draft, and those joining the military thereafter did so as volunteers.

THE SELECTIVE SERVICE IN THE EARLY-TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Despite the end of the draft, in the early-twenty-first century the Selective Service exists as a contingency in the event of a draft. All males in the United States must register within thirty days of their eighteenth birthdays; that requirement applies to citizens and aliens alike. Registrants may sign up via mail, at a U.S. post office, or on a student federal financial aid form. Because the Selective Service does not apply draft status classification to registrants when there is no draft, disabled men must also register. Similarly men who are conscientious objectors to war must register with the Selective Service, since there is no place on the registration form to indicate objection to induction into the armed services. The mere act of registering, however, does not guarantee a man will be inducted in the event of a draft. As it did during previous wars where a draft was in place, the Selective Service would classify registrants to determine eligibility for induction and deferments when and if a draft is reinstated. Additionally, according to its mission statement, the Selective Service would devise an alternative service program for those classified as conscientious objectors.

Females are not required to register with the Selective Service. Congress has explicitly stated in all Selective Service legislation that only males are required to register. In a 1981 case challenging the constitutionality of that particular clause (Rostker v. Goldberg ), the Supreme Court ruled that Congress was well within its authority to exclude women from registration with the Selective Service because the purpose of the legislation is to raise and regulate armies and navies for combat action, and women are excluded from nearly every type of military combat. President William J. Clinton (b. 1946) ordered a review of the policy regarding females and Selective Service registration in 1994, and the Department of Defense reported that the process of exclusion remained justifiable because of combat regulations and restrictions but noted the need to revisit the issue as the roles of female soldiers expand in the future.

In the event Congress passes legislation reinstating the draft, a National Draft Lottery would be conducted to determine the order in which men would be drafted for induction. The lottery would be based upon the birth dates of registrants, beginning with those men twenty years of age during that calendar year. A major difference from the Vietnam draft-era is that registrants who are eighteen and nineteen years old during the year of the draft would most likely not be called, as opposed to the great number of men under the age of twenty called to Vietnam. The lottery would be conducted in public and under the auspices of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in order to insure as random a lottery as possible.

SEE ALSO Civil-Military Relation; Military; National Service Programs; Pacifism; Peace Movements; U.S. Civil War; Vietnam War; World War I; World War II

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Flynn, George Q. 2002. Conscription and Democracy: The Draft in France, Great Britain, and the United States. Westport, CT: Greenwood.

Graham, John R. 1980. Constitutional History of the Military Draft. Hudson, WI: Ross & Haines.

Holmes, Richard. 1985. Acts of War. New York: Free Press.

Huntington, Samuel P. 2005. The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Kusch, Frank. 2001. All American Boys: Draft Dodgers in Canada from the Vietnam War. Westport, CT: Praeger Publications.

McNamara, Robert S. 1995. In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. New York: Random House.

Rostker v. Goldberg, 453 U.S. 57 (1981).

Selective Service System. http://www.sss.gov.

Matthew May