Steve Palmer and law student Troy Henricksen talk about a timely and thought-provoking topic—the delicate balance between following military orders and questioning their legality and morality.

With recent political debates swirling around Congress members urging military personnel not to obey unlawful executive orders, the conversation delves into both personal experience and historical context.

Drawing from Troy Henricksen’s background in the military, the discussion explores how soldiers are trained to respond to commands, when it’s acceptable to challenge orders, and the tricky ethical territory that comes with it.

Together, Steve Palmer and Troy Henricksen look at famous examples from history and pop culture—from the Nuremberg trials to Hollywood films like “Crimson Tide”—to illuminate the very real dilemmas facing those in uniform today.

Whether you’re interested in the intersection of law, politics, or ethics, this episode promises a nuanced look at what really happens when the chain of command is put to the test.

Key Points:

• Soldiers Are Taught to Follow Orders—With Limits. Troy Henricksen shares firsthand insight: soldiers must obey commands, but there are clear exceptions for unlawful or unethical orders. The “Nuremberg defense” (“just following orders”) is not absolute.
• Human Discretion Is Baked Into U.S. Military Law. Unlike some historical regimes, the American system expects soldiers to use judgment about the morality and legality of orders—balancing strict discipline with individual responsibility.
• The Political Debate Is Complicated and Ongoing. Both Steve Palmer and Troy Henricksen highlight how politicians can weaponize legal nuances, creating dilemmas not just for policy but for individuals tasked with carrying out those orders.

Submit your questions to www.lawyertalkpodcast.com.

Recorded at Channel 511.

Stephen E. Palmer, Esq. has been practicing criminal defense almost exclusively since 1995. He has represented people in federal, state, and local courts in Ohio and elsewhere.

Though he focuses on all areas of criminal defense, he particularly enjoys complex cases in state and federal courts.

He has unique experience handling and assembling top defense teams of attorneys and experts in cases involving allegations of child abuse (false sexual allegations, false physical abuse allegations), complex scientific cases involving allegations of DUI and vehicular homicide cases with blood alcohol tests, and any other criminal cases that demand jury trial experience.

Steve has unique experience handling numerous high publicity cases that have garnered national attention.

For more information about Steve and his law firm, visit Palmer Legal Defense.

Copyright 2026 Stephen E. Palmer - Attorney At Law

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All right, lawyer talk. Off the record, on the air, we're going to break it down with something they don't teach me in the legal world, and I didn't really learn it in law school, but ironically, our law student has some insight into this. So Troy Henriksen obviously is our resident law clerk. Law student, soon to be a lawyer.

Hopefully in less than a year.

In the news. Yeah, you'll pass the bar. In the news is this notion. Not notion. There's the big six, Congress, whoever they are in Congress who are calling on the military to say you don't have to follow the orders that are unlawful. And what they're really saying is don't do what Trump tells you to do if you don't agree with them. Maybe I've oversimplified it, but it's an interesting debate because now we have this notion that military. Does the military, legally speaking, have to follow orders of the executive branch? And what the heck would Troy know about that? Well, you were in the military.

Yes, And I'm not saying I'm a military expert. I've been out for like three years. So if there's like some active duty, Green Beret, Navy seals in there who are like, wow, this guy didn't get spot on. I'm sorry, I'm a little rusty. I didn't have any prep on this.

But you can't be wrong about sharing with us your insights of how you would respond to such a thing as a soldier. You can't be wrong about that because it's what you. It's like. I'm very curious to hear, like, you, you were a soldier. So at what rank?

I. I finished. I was an E5. I was a medic in the army. In the army, I was attached to combat engineers and the military police. So I was an mp. I was an engineer. Every unit has medics.

We're the second largest MOs. Everybody just needs, like a little doc there. So that is. I still do stuff with them, everything. But it's. I wasn't a medic. I wasn't a. Sorry, I wasn't an engineer or an mp, but I still received orders just like everyone else.

I still listen to my commands. And that's like the main gist of what this is. And we talked about a little bit earlier. If I receive an order, any soldier in the military, I have to follow that order. Now, there's the exceptions. We always talk about exceptions. It's the, you don't follow unlawful or unethical orders, and it's the whole Newberg defense is, I was just following orders. I'm just doing what I'm told.

At the end of the day, if you give me an order, we'll put in like a office example upstairs. You give me an order, hey, I want you to file this motion full of just a bunch of fake cases, not stuff that actually falls along.

Or let's just say this. I say file a motion to continue and just make up, lie in the motion.

Yeah. First thing I would do is I would look at you and be like, this is not good, this is bad. I address my issues with your order. Same thing in the military.

A valid, reasonable question.

Hey, I'm going to question this and you say, no, you're going to do it. This is now where it starts to get tricky in the military. We have our general orders and where you can question like I just did, but now do I have to continue with the order even though I've questioned you on it and I can either say, yes, I'm going to do it. And now I have this defense that I tried questioning. You want to do it or I don't do it. And now you send me to trial.

Well, in Nuremberg, that defense didn't work.

Well, I don't think Nuremberg. They questioned it, did they?

Well, I mean, if they questioned it, they got shot. There was no policy or practice to question it.

Yeah, we don't shoot you right away and we would send you to a trial in a military court and we determine like, well, that order was bad, you shouldn't have followed it. You did the right thing being a soldier. You were following your general orders, you were doing the right thing. Nuremberg is difficult. I know it's a hard example because, yes, they were getting shot. So I don't know.

So what we're saying, it's funny, our military's created the standard and I like, they're baking into the cake a little bit of discretion on the soldier. Germany, the German, there was no discretion whatsoever. In fact, that's one of the reasons, like the analysts would go, or the historians go back and say that actually shackled the German army a little bit in winning the war or one of the reasons they lost the war. But now we're baking into the cake a little bit of discretion on the soldier's part to not file unethical or not follow rather unethical or unlawful orders. But you want them to do what you're told. So it's like we don't really. How do they teach you and how do you discern aside from your own internal morals. What's a moral? Like, it's not like you pull out the book and say, well, look, disqualifies under article whatever as an immoral order.

I mean, you're right. You have to use your gut pretty much. But the problem is you don't want them doing that a lot because it's the military. You're trying to get stuff done, and.

You open up that Pandora's box and you got a mess. I mean, you got people saying, well, that's unlawful. I'm not doing it. I disagree. That's immoral. Well, they're like, I don't want to kill those people.

Yeah, we're going to go through. And we're going to stall through this village. And, like, we gotta be careful. There's, like, civilians in there.

It's like, I'm not going.

Yeah, it's like, no, you can't do it. But at the end of the day, you will go to trial then for not following that order. And a military court's gonna sit there and be like, no, you should have followed that order. That wasn't bad.

You're disciplined for it. Yeah, but look, if everybody does it at that given time, then nobody's following the order. You can't get anything done. I mean, there's no good answer here. It's such an interesting conundrum. And of course, we've taken this from the politics down to the law, which I love.

Right.

But it's even better. Even the morals behind the law.

Yeah. In my eight years, I never saw anybody question order. There was also no orders given down that I wouldn't have followed, though. So it's hard to tell.

There's all sorts of examples in Hollywood and real history about this kind of stuff. Crimson Tide, that movie with Denzel Washington and Just Died, played Sean Connor. No, Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman. Gene Hackman in Crimson Tide is a submarine movie where they both had the key, and Denzel was the first officer on the ship and Hackman was the captain and said, give me that. We're firing those men. No, we're not. Well, at the end, the Navy basically says, neither of you is wrong. Neither of you is right.

It's in the middle. And I think Rob Reiner directed that movie. Or no, no, no. I'm thinking of A Few Good Men he directed. But anyway, the point I think they were making is, look, we're going to put into this a little bit of human discretion and then just hope it works. It's almost like hope it works out the way it should. Which is a fascinating thought, really. I haven't even given it that much thought until just now.

It's really sort of a deep thought, like we're going to bake into the equation, the human component. Whereas the Germans, the Nazis, nothing to the point where they would die before they disobeyed an order. They would let horrible things happen like the invasion of Normandy before they not even disobeyed an order, but didn't go move their troops from Pas de Calais all the way up to Normandy to actually mount a defense because they didn't want to wake Hitler up because he was asleep. And it's like the American concept is a little bit more individualistic than that. We didn't have just one big Borg that everybody.

You know, I think Nurmdurg's like a little different now. I'm like trying to. Like we were talking about this morning and I just. It's all coming to me more now. I mean, those guys on trial were high ups.

Well, that's right. Let's talk about that part of it. So let's say there's a colonel or a lieutenant colonel or a major. I mean, and you said earlier that all right, those guys are the ones that could dictate a little bit of politics.

Yeah, yeah. So the military works. There is the, there's the platoon level leadership was lieutenants, there's a company which is captains. And then you start getting to battalion, which is. Then you have majors, colonels, and that's like brigade. These are all the people who work with troops and actually get stuff done and can actually move thousands of people once you get higher than that, like generals and full birds and all that. They're pretty much in an office. They're at the Pentagon.

They're not really dictating as much as you would think. And let's say a captain or a major decides to say, no, screw off. I'm not following the orders.

I'm not going to blow up the boat from.

Yeah.

The drug ship.

Yeah, I don't think. I think they have way more power to say no.

The executive crams it down. The executive being Trump crams it down. And the person to whom he crams it down crams it down to somebody else. And that person says, I find that a little bit immoral. I'm not going to follow that order. I mean, there's somebody in that chain of command who would, because I get it. There's the guy with the joystick who's running the drones. But then above that guy, somebody tells that guy to do it.

And above that guy, it came down. So, like, somewhere in that chain, you could see, based on this call to action by Congress. Well, look, I don't agree. I think this is a little bit immoral. I think this is illegal. So therefore, I'm not gonna follow the order.

I just don't think we're punishing these lower guys for not saying no. That was Nurburgring trials. It's like, okay, you guys are the top dogs.

Yeah. You had gurring.

And, you know, you guys kind of could have, like. Kind of could have said no. Or at least, like, you were the voice of reason that could have swayed stuff to go on differently.

Well, look, Rommel tried to question Hitler, and. No, actually, I think he might have been part of the plot to assassinate Hitler, but he was like, he was killed or given the choice, take this cyanide or we'll kill you. So even the. Even the higher ups at Nuremberg would have said, look, I get it, but we would have been shot, were forced to take poison. I think the American response there was no. You were ideologues. You were believers in the cause. I mean, you were.

I get it. Even if you question order, you'd have been shot, but you were part of the command that was issuing the orders, like you were on board with it. And I think maybe the difference is, at Nuremberg, anybody who questioned was already dead. So it's like, yeah, you know, who knows? But let's put it back into perspective, what we just talked about. Somewhere in the chain of command with the guy, you know, whoever the soldier is with the joystick operating the drone, somebody told that guy to blow up the boat.

Yeah. And that. I mean, that guy didn't get any context at all, I imagine. It's not like these drone pilots or like people returning the key are handed a book on their target. Like, here's everything about them. They're given a grid coordinate. They're given, like, a target description, and they're like, hit it. They don't know.

They don't know what's there.

But somebody between that person and the executive branch would have had the context.

Yes. And so that person is probably the one. They're like, don't say no, because he can't punish the drone pilot. Like, I mean, he's just. He probably knows there's terrorists on that boat. He has no idea what's on that boat.

He knows that he's doing what he's told to do.

Yeah. And I think now, meeting all that the drone pilot probably knows a little bit more. It's still a way.

The drone pilot's a unique example because it's definitionally removed from the consequence. Take this group of prisoners out back and shoot them. Well, that is the context. So questioning that order, you could see that happening at boots on the ground level, but fire the missile at a boat of enemy.

My job is to turn key, press button. I don't even aim it. I don't even know what we're firing. I just turn key, press button.

So back to the original question, or maybe back to a question that we'll wrap it up with is what's your thought? Rather then on these politicians, I'll call them, making this sort of blanket statement, hey, look, you remember soldiers, you don't have to fall because really it's true, because the policy you told us about is actually the case. But they're really saying is believe with or fall in step with us politically, you don't have to do what your president's saying to do. It's a weird line.

My thought is, if you believe there's a moral and unethical order coming down to you, question it. If you really believe that, question it. And then if your command says no, they might explain it better to you, or they'll just tell you. A lot of what they did in the military was just fuck off, do it, then do it. Like, follow the order. I don't think anything going on right now, this might just be my opinion, is there's nothing crazy. There's no take them out back and shoot them. It's not going hard because it's political.

Right. It's like this weird political win. And it's not just about what's happening, it's about who's ordering it. So it's like, all right, Trump's ordering it, so we hate it. And look, I'm not taking Trump's side on this, but it just seems like that's what's going. So one political side is saying you don't have to follow the orders of the executive branch. On the other political side, it's sort of a dangerous precedent. I don't know that they will successfully be prosecuted.

I guess there's an investigation.

These general orders of questioning, though, is something you learn. Like, week one, you are allowed. Now you're also learning a basic training where you would never question an order.

Don'T ever question an order.

But if you do, here's the procedure. Does everybody memorize it? Okay, cool. Now, don't question if you have a.

Question we're going to. Yeah. All right, look again. No answers here. Why? Because we're lawyers. We don't answer any questions. We talk about issues. If you've got an issue you want us to talk about or you got a thought on, I would love to.

This is one I would love to hear everybody's debate on. Because it's the Nuremberg debate in some sort of theory, or the Few Good Men debate or the Crimson Tide debate or whatever. Or, you know, what's the Slim Pickens debate? Different movie. Anyway, lawyer talk, off the record, on the air till now.