Members of the U.S. military have the legal right to refuse orders they believe are unlawful, but they risk violating military laws of obedience if the order is in fact lawful, experts in military law say.

Service members are expected to presume their orders are lawful -- if they relate to military duty and comes from a proper authority in the chain of command -- unless the orders fit into a "small subset" of egregious orders that would constitute war crimes. That standard was set in the Nuremberg trials after World War II, in which Nazis could not defend their crimes as simply obeying orders.

Most orders that blur the line between lawful and unlawful, however, reside in a gray zone in which soldiers, airmen, sailors, Marines and and coast guardians are not obliged to disobey. It i

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