IANAL, so I may have some preconceived notions, so I'll just lay them out. UCMJ is absolutely a legal system, and it deals with punishments for criminal action

IANAL, so I may have some preconceived notions, so I'll just lay them out. UCMJ is absolutely a legal system, and it deals with punishments for criminal actions. Most of the UCMJ is regular criminal law[1] covering everything from arson to rape to petty theft. (For non-Americans: criminal law is generally legislated and enforced at the state level, but military bases are under US jurisdiction.) The UCMJ does elevate some bad performance to criminal status: sleeping on guard duty, malingering, disrespect to officers, etc. But the UCMJ says those things are crimes and punishes them as crimes, though it's far less dramatic than it sounds.[2] Employment contracts in the US are generally "at will," so the remedy your employer has if you're not doing your job is to fire you. Your remedy if you don't like your job is to quit. For either side to be subject to a tort (getting sued) there has to be a breach of contract, which means there was a contract you signed or at least discussed with your employer. For you to be subject to criminal penalties, you usually have to have intentionally caused harm to someone. So if you're a salaried employee, have you ever signed a contract guaranteeing some level of performance? In any of the cases we're discussing, are people being sued for monetary damages? It happens; if you're an actor you have to complete some number of shows, but most 9 to 5 jobs aren't like that. If there's no contract where an employee is promising a level of performance, their performance is not even a civil case, let alone a criminal case. And that's where my claim that it's wrongheaded to put this in terms of justice. It's simply not the case that doing a bad job is something that we'd normally put someone on trial for. While courts are good at dispassionately hearing evidence and so forth, non-lawyers don't view trials dispassionately! They view them as a morality play where the righteous vanquish the wicked, which is completely inappropriate. [1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/subtitle-A/part-II/chapter-47/subchapter-X https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/subtitle-A/part-I... [2]: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-is-an-article-15-3354210 https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-is-an-article-15-3354...