10 USC § 502 - Enlistment oath: who may administer | Title 10 - Armed Forces | U.S. Code

USCPrelim is a preliminary release and may be subject to further revision before it is released again as a final version.

Current through Pub. L. 113-9. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)

(a) Enlistment Oath.— Each person enlisting in an armed force shall take the following oath:

“I, XXXXXXXXXX, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

(b) Who May Administer.— The oath may be taken before the President, the Vice-President, the Secretary of Defense, any commissioned officer, or any other person designated under regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Defense.

prev | next

(a) Enlistment Oath.— Each person enlisting in an armed force shall take the following oath:

“I, XXXXXXXXXX, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

(b) Who May Administer.— The oath may be taken before the President, the Vice-President, the Secretary of Defense, any commissioned officer, or any other person designated under regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Defense.

Source

(Aug. 10, 1956, ch. 1041, 70A Stat. 17, § 501; Pub. L. 87–751, § 1,Oct. 5, 1962, 76 Stat. 748; renumbered § 502,Pub. L. 90–235, § 2(a)(1)(A),Jan. 2, 1968, 81 Stat. 753; Pub. L. 101–189, div. A, title VI, § 653(a)(1),Nov. 29, 1989, 103 Stat. 1462; Pub. L. 109–364, div. A, title V, § 595(a),Oct. 17, 2006, 120 Stat. 2235.)

Historical and Revision Notes
Revised section	Source (U.S. Code)	Source (Statutes at Large)
501	50:737.	May 5, 1950, ch. 169, § 8, 64 Stat. 146.

The words “or affirmation” are omitted as covered by the definition of the word “oath” in section 1 of title 1. The words “of any armed force” are inserted in the last sentence, since they are necessarily implied by their use in the source statute.

References in Text

The Uniform Code of Military Justice, referred to in the oath, is classified to chapter 47 (§ 801 et seq.) of this title.

Amendments

2006—Pub. L. 109–364designated existing provisions as subsec. (a), inserted heading, struck out concluding provisions which read as follows: “This oath may be taken before any commissioned officer of any armed force.”, and added subsec. (b).

1989—Pub. L. 101–189struck out “or affirmation” after “This oath”.

1962—Pub. L. 87–751substituted “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same” for “bear true faith and allegiance to the United States of America; that I will serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies whomsoever” and inserted “So help me God” in the oath, and “or affirmation” in text.

Effective Date of 1962 Amendment

Section 3 ofPub. L. 87–751provided that: “This Act [amending this section and section 304 of Title 32, National Guard] does not affect any oath taken before one year after its enactment [Oct. 5, 1962].”

The table below lists the classification updates, since Jan. 3, 2012, for this section. Updates to a broader range of sections may be found at the update page for containing chapter, title, etc.

The most recent Classification Table update that we have noticed was Wednesday, May 29, 2013

An empty table indicates that we see no relevant changes listed in the classification tables. If you suspect that our system may be missing something, please double-check with the Office of the Law Revision Counsel.

How To Use

Multiple entries for a section are listed most recent first, within the section.

The Session Year indicates which session of Congress was responsible for the changes classified. The Congress number forms the first part of the Public Law number; each Congress has two sessions.

Abbreviations used in the Description of Change column:

An empty field implies a standard amendment.
"new" means a new section or new note, or all new text of an existing section or note.
"nt" means note.
"nt [tbl]" means note [table].
"prec" means preceding.
"fr" means a transfer from another section.
"to" means a transfer to another section.
"omitted" means the section is omitted.
"repealed" means the section is repealed.
"nt ed change" and "ed change" - See the Editorial Classification Change Table [pdf].

The Public Law field is linked to the development of the law in the Thomas system at the Library of Congress.

The Statutes at Large field is linked to the text of the law, in the context of its volume of the Statutes at Large, at the Government Printing Office. Please note that it takes a while for these pages to get posted, so for very recent legislation, you need to look at the "enrolled" version at the Thomas site.

The Statutes at Large references have been rendered in the format used as page numbers in the Public Law web pages to which we link, to facilitate copy-paste into browser "find on this (web) page" tools. We are still working on a more direct link facility.

For serious comparison work, we suggest copying all or a portion of the Public Law text into your favorite text editor, for convenient content traversal and window control.

Sections with change type "new" are a special case, still under development. All are now listed, at the title level only.

You will find that occassionally a specific update you notice in a Public Law listed in a classification table will already have made it into the Code. We assume this is an artifact of the LRC edit process. The LII does not edit the LRC content.

top

General Reference

Refer to the LRC (Law Revision Council) for explanations about the US Code from the folks who put it all together.

You can look for information about what it is and is not, which titles are positive law, the schedule of Supplements, etc. Under download you can find the source data we use here (GPO locator files), as well as, PDF files that look just like the paper books (these may be rather large).

Refer to the Thomas site for changes that have not yet made it into the classification tables.

10 USC	Description of Change	Session Year	Public Law	Statutes at Large

10 USC § 502 - Enlistment oath: who may administer

U.S. Code Toolbox

Law about... Articles from Wex

Get Involved

Find a Lawyer