THE VIETNAM-WAR ON TRIAL - THE COURT-MARTIAL OF LEVY,HOWARD,B

This Article examines the history of a Vietnam War-era case: the court -martial of Dr. Howard B. Levy. The U.S. Army court-martialled Dr. Lev y for refusing to teach medicine to Green Beret soldiers and for criti cizing both the Green Berets and American involvement in Vietnam. Alth ough the Supreme Court eventually upheld Levy's conviction in Parker v . Levy, its decision obscures the political content of Levy's court-ma rtial and its relationship to the war. At the court-martial Levy sough t to defend himself by showing that his disparaging remarks about the Green Berets, identifying them as ''killers of peasants and murderers of women and children,'' were true and that his refusal to teach medic ine to Green Beret soldiers was dictated by medical ethics, given the ways in which the soldiers would misuse their medical knowledge. Ultim ately, Levy put the war itself on trial by arguing that had he trained the soldiers he would have abetted their war crimes. This Article see ks to recapture the history of the Levy case as a case about the Vietn am War. Yet the case was also about much more. The Article shows how i magery evoking beliefs about race and racial difference, war, frontier violence, and medicine and healing all came into play in the Levy cas e. It also explores the manner in which the court-martial became a for um in which the Vietnam War and aspects of U.S. Army policy and conduc t were debated, and in which that debate was eventually suppressed. Ul timately, this Article begins the exploration of how American legal in stitutions coped with the crisis of political and moral legitimacy tha t they confronted in the late 1960s.