international law International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between states. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for ...

, a criminal order or illegal order is a

military order Military order may refer to: Orders * Military order (religious society), confraternity of knights originally established as religious societies during the medieval Crusades for protection of Christianity and the Catholic Church Military organi ...

for the commission of a war crime or other violation of

international criminal law International criminal law (ICL) is a body of public international law designed to prohibit certain categories of conduct commonly viewed as serious atrocities and to make perpetrators of such conduct criminally accountable for their perpetrati ...

. Because

superior orders Superior orders, also known as the Nuremberg defense or just following orders, is a plea in a court of law that a person, whether a member of the military, law enforcement, a firefighting force, or the civilian population, should not be considere ...

do not exonerate such violations, it is obligatory to disobey the order. Furthermore, the commander is also responsible under the doctrine of

command responsibility Command responsibility (superior responsibility, the Yamashita standard, and the Medina standard) is the legal doctrine of hierarchical accountability for war crimes.

See also

References

Further reading