Evelyn Farkas, Arizona State University

Senate confirmation hearings are slated to begin on Jan. 14, 2025, for Pete Hegseth, whom President-elect Donald Trump has chosen to serve as the next secretary of defense. It’s a massive job, broadly affecting Americans’ security at home and abroad and overseeing huge numbers of people and immense amounts of money.

The Conversation U.S. asked Evelyn Farkas, a longtime Defense Department leader who is now executive director of the McCain Institute at Arizona State University, to explain what the secretary of defense’s job entails and what makes a person effective at that job. During the Obama administration, Farkas was a deputy assistant secretary of defense with a focus on Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia. Prior to that, she was a civilian adviser to the top military officer in NATO, and earlier still she was a senior staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which oversees the military. She also served as a professor at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College.

What does the secretary of defense do?

They’re responsible for about 3.4 million people, including 1.2 million active duty service members and 1.3 million reservists, as well as about 900,000 civilian employees. The secretary is responsible for making sure those people are able to do their jobs – which, collectively, is to defend the United States, the American people and U.S. interests.

They’re responsible for defense policy, spending and operations, which includes the people, property and equipment at about 500 military bases across all 50 states and another 750 or so bases in 80 countries around the world. They’re responsible for budgeting and spending almost US$2 trillion a year in federal funds, which is about 16% of the overall federal budget.

What is the secretary’s role in commanding the nation’s military forces?

The president is the commander in chief and decides when and how to use the military. But the president’s decision to use force relies on advice and recommendations from the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The president orders the secretary to carry out military operations, and the orders pass down from the secretary to the relevant commanders from there.

What is an average day or week for the secretary of defense?

The secretary sets the vision and tone for the Department of Defense and helps the president develop his or her defense strategy, and then implements that strategy. The secretary also designs and implements policies to advance the strategy and the overall national security objectives of the president.

The Defense Department’s responsibility is focused on the use of the military, whether it’s to deter attacks or defend American interests. The secretary must make sure the military is equipped and trained – ready – to fight and win the nation’s wars and to conduct any other operations, such as humanitarian, counterterrorism or peace operations.

The secretary sets priorities, which are reflected in the department’s budget. The budget has to be negotiated with Congress, of course. Day to day, the secretary is holding meetings with people who are charged with managing different aspects of the department’s activity. This happens regularly in the Pentagon or when the secretary visits military units and installations in the U.S. or around the world.

There are undersecretaries for policy and the budget and other functions such as personnel and readiness. Then there are service secretaries, who look at all of those issues but only for one specific service – the Army, the Navy, which includes the Marine Corps, and the Air Force, which includes the Space Force.

Does the president talk to the secretary of defense regularly?

It depends on the president. Most presidents have regular meetings with their top officials as a Cabinet, as a group, and then, of course, individually. Some presidents will have a standing lunch with their Cabinet members, or just a formal meeting.

Generally speaking, most presidents would seek to have a meeting at least once a week that involves their secretary of defense. There’s a lot going on in the world, and most of the events or crises involve some decision about the use of military force or some effect on defense capabilities.

How does the secretary of defense affect regular Americans’ lives?

The secretary’s involvement in a decision to use nuclear weapons would certainly affect almost every American. So that’s one way, and any decisions involving war could potentially affect any given American.

Short of that, the economic ripple effects of decisions the secretary makes could be national. The defense budget is large, but not enough to affect everyone all at the same time. But for example, if the secretary of defense decides to close a base, that would have impact on most people in that community, if not all of them, at least indirectly. Businesses would have to adjust or close, and the military personnel and their families would have to move. And the political leadership of the community would be empowered to make decisions about the civilian use of properties previously owned by the Department of Defense.

Almost every kind of company does business with the Department of Defense, either directly or indirectly. The commissaries stock food and medicine and all sorts of regular items that the military buys, in addition to equipment for fighting.

And then there’s research and development. Historically, the Defense Department has put a lot of money into those efforts, which has had a lot of effect on consumers’ lives. It’s not just the internet, although that’s one example of something that was invented for military purposes and then translated into civilian use. A lot of smaller developments happen, too, because when a lot of money is being poured into innovation, they discover things along the way that can be commercialized.

Nowadays the civilian sector has outpaced the Defense Department in terms of research and development and innovation, but the defense dollars still make a big difference.

What personal or professional attributes make for an effective defense secretary?

I worked for four of them, three directly. Robert Gates had a high sense of empathy and lots of prior government experience. Leon Panetta had an acute sense of humor and a direct but funny way of interacting. He also had the advantage of having held multiple high-level jobs in other parts of the government. Chuck Hagel had a direct line to the Senate, and Ashton Carter was a hard-driven expert.

The most useful attributes include honesty, empathy, a sense of humor, a sharp intellect, the ability to learn quickly and the skill to determine what is important quickly. Of course, prior government experience working with the department is invaluable. It’s helpful to have an understanding of how the Defense Department works, with all its components, and its strengths and weaknesses, before you get into the job. The department has a military and civilian bureaucracy, and it takes some savvy work to get it to move quickly to implement the president’s strategy.

During the confirmation process, like all nominees, the secretary is required to attest in writing and sometimes verbally that they will provide truthful answers to Congress and that they will be responsive when Congress has questions.

Different secretaries do a better job at that than others. Secretary Donald Rumsfeld often would annoy members of Congress because he knew there was a time limit on his ability to speak and on each senator’s ability to speak. So he would just speak until the clock ran out, and that made them mad. He wouldn’t always answer questions directly and sometimes came off as arrogant.

The interactions with Congress are this delicate dance, because a secretary wants to protect the prerogatives of the president and the executive branch. But Congress pays the bills, provides any new authorities the secretary might be seeking and can curtail both the authority and the budget. A secretary wants to defend the policies, the budget and the actions of the Department of Defense. But they also want to be respectful of Congress’ role and responsibilities and the individual members of Congress.

Sometimes that balance is hard to strike. They’re in a really demanding job, and they get called to testify in front of Congress, usually with the TV cameras on. Members of Congress aren’t always polite, so it takes a lot of patience and self control on the part of the secretary of defense to successfully maintain good relations, public and private, with members of Congress.

What do the American people deserve from a defense secretary?

The secretary should be someone who will stand up for the military and civilians in the department and demand from the president and Congress the resources needed to execute their mission and to provide for the well-being of the personnel, who are, after all, Americans.

I would also say a secretary should interact with the media in a way that strikes the right balance between informing the American public about what the department and the military are doing in the name of the American people and protecting national security secrets. At the end of the day, the secretary of defense is working for the American people in their interest and that of the nation.

This story is part of a series of profiles of Cabinet and high-level administration positions.

Evelyn Farkas, Executive Director, McCain Institute, Arizona State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Yunsuh Nike Wee, Oklahoma State University; Daniel Sznycer, Oklahoma State University, and Jaimie Arona Krems, University of California, Los Angeles

The Bible’s lex talionis – “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot” (Exodus 21:24-27) – has captured the human imagination for millennia. This idea of fairness has been a model for ensuring justice when bodily harm is inflicted.

Thanks to the work of linguists, historians, archaeologists and anthropologists, researchers know a lot about how different body parts are appraised in societies both small and large, from ancient times to the present day.

But where did such laws originate?

According to one school of thought, laws are cultural constructions – meaning they vary across cultures and historical periods, adapting to local customs and social practices. By this logic, laws about bodily damage would differ substantially between cultures.

Our new study explored a different possibility – that laws about bodily damage are rooted in something universal about human nature: shared intuitions about the value of body parts.

Do people across cultures and throughout history agree on which body parts are more or less valuable? Until now, no one had systematically tested whether body parts are valued similarly across space, time and levels of legal expertise – that is, among laypeople versus lawmakers.

We are psychologists who study evaluative processes and social interactions. In previous research, we have identified regularities in how people evaluate different wrongful actions, personal characteristics, friends and foods. The body is perhaps a person’s most valuable asset, and in this study we analyzed how people value its different parts. We investigated links between intuitions about the value of body parts and laws about bodily damage.

How critical is a body part or its function?

We began with a simple observation: Different body parts and functions have different effects on the odds that a person will survive and thrive. Life without a toe is a nuisance. But life without a head is impossible. Might people intuitively understand that different body parts are have different values?

Knowing the value of body parts gives you an edge. For example, if you or a loved one has suffered multiple injuries, you could treat the most valuable body part first, or allocate a greater share of limited resources to its treatment.

This knowledge could also play a role in negotiations when one person has injured another. When person A injures person B, B or B’s family can claim compensation from A or A’s family. This practice appears around the world: among the Mesopotamians, the Chinese during the Tang dynasty, the Enga of Papua New Guinea, the Nuer of Sudan, the Montenegrins and many others. The Anglo-Saxon word “wergild,” meaning “man price,” now designates in general the practice of paying for body parts.

But how much compensation is fair? Claiming too little leads to loss, while claiming too much risks retaliation. To walk the fine line between the two, victims would claim compensation in Goldilocks fashion: just right, based on the consensus value that victims, offenders and third parties in the community attach to the body part in question.

This Goldilocks principle is readily apparent in the exact proportionality of the lex talionis – “eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” Other legal codes dictate precise values of different body parts but do so in money or other goods. For example, the Code of Ur-Nammu, written 4,100 years ago in ancient Nippur, present-day Iraq, states that a man must pay 40 shekels of silver if he cuts off another man’s nose, but only 2 shekels if he knocks out another man’s tooth.

Testing the idea across cultures and time

If people have intuitive knowledge of the values of different body parts, might this knowledge underpin laws about bodily damage across cultures and historical eras?

To test this hypothesis, we conducted a study involving 614 people from the United States and India. The participants read descriptions of various body parts, such as “one arm,” “one foot,” “the nose,” “one eye” and “one molar tooth.” We chose these body parts because they were featured in legal codes from five different cultures and historical periods that we studied: the Law of Æthelberht from Kent, England, in 600 C.E., the Guta lag from Gotland, Sweden, in 1220 C.E., and modern workers’ compensation laws from the United States, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates.

Participants answered one question about each body part they were shown. We asked some how difficult it would be for them to function in daily life if they lost various body parts in an accident. Others we asked to imagine themselves as lawmakers and determine how much compensation an employee should receive if that person lost various body parts in a workplace accident. Still others we asked to estimate how angry another person would feel if the participant damaged various parts of the other’s body. While these questions differ, they all rely on assessing the value of different body parts.

To determine whether untutored intuitions underpin laws, we didn’t include people who had college training in medicine or law.

Then we analyzed whether the participants’ intuitions matched the compensations established by law.

Our findings were striking. The values placed on body parts by both laypeople and lawmakers were largely consistent. The more highly American laypeople tended to value a given body part, the more valuable this body part seemed also to Indian laypeople, to American, Korean and Emirati lawmakers, to King Æthelberht and to the authors of the Guta lag. For example, laypeople and lawmakers across cultures and over centuries generally agree that the index finger is more valuable than the ring finger, and that one eye is more valuable than one ear.

But do people value body parts accurately, in a way that corresponds with their actual functionality? There are some hints that, yes, they do. For example, laypeople and lawmakers regard the loss of a single part as less severe than the loss of multiples of that part. In addition, laypeople and lawmakers regard the loss of a part as less severe than the loss of the whole; the loss of a thumb is less severe than the loss of a hand, and the loss of a hand is less severe than the loss of an arm.

Additional evidence of accuracy can be gleaned from ancient laws. For example, linguist Lisi Oliver notes that in Barbarian Europe, “wounds that may cause permanent incapacitation or disability are fined higher than those which may eventually heal.”

Although people generally agree in valuing some body parts more than others, some sensible differences may arise. For instance, sight would be more important for someone making a living as a hunter than as a shaman. The local environment and culture might also play a role. For example, upper body strength could be particularly important in violent areas, where one needs to defend oneself against attacks. These differences remain to be investigated.

Morality and law, across time and space

Much of what counts as moral or immoral, legal or illegal, varies from place to place. Drinking alcohol, eating meat and cousin marriage, for example, have been variously condemned or favored in different times and places.

But recent research has also shown that, in some domains, there is much more moral and legal consensus about what is wrong, across cultures and even throughout the millennia. Wrongdoing – arson, theft, fraud, trespassing and disorderly conduct – appears to engender a morality and related laws that are similar across times and places. Laws about bodily damage also seem to fit into this category of moral or legal universals.

Yunsuh Nike Wee, Ph.D. Student in Experimental Psychology, Oklahoma State University; Daniel Sznycer, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Oklahoma State University, and Jaimie Arona Krems, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Wayne Unger, Quinnipiac University

Donald Trump is now a convicted felon, and will be the first president of the United States with a felony conviction.

On Jan. 10, 2025, Justice Juan Merchan, who presided over the trial in a New York state court, sentenced Trump to an unconditional discharge for all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. In his statement to the court, Trump maintained the point he had made throughout the prosecution, that the whole case was a political witch hunt.

“The fact is, I’m totally innocent,” said Trump via a video appearance in the court.

During the sentencing, Merchan said he was keenly aware of the unique set of circumstances before him and the country. He characterized the trial as ordinary while acknowledging the context of the case was extraordinary.

“Never before has this court been presented with such a unique and remarkable set of circumstances,” said Merchan.

The sentencing brings this phase of the case to an end. Once the sentence is officially entered in a final judgment, Trump can appeal the case, as he has a legal right to do so. Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, made clear during the sentencing that Trump intends to appeal.

Trump ultimately failed to block sentencing

On May 30, 2024, a New York County jury found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. That constituted a Class E felony in the state of New York, when the falsification is committed with an intent to defraud, commit another crime, or to aid or conceal the commission of another crime.

Class E felonies carry a potential penalty of up to four years in prison and a fine up to $5,000 for each count. Trial courts reserve discretion, however, to impose a sentence that accounts for other factors, such as the defendant’s criminal history.

In recent court filings, Trump sought to get his guilty verdict thrown out, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision on presidential immunity in criminal prosecutions meant he can’t be found guilty.

On July 1, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court had concluded that the Constitution provides “absolute immunity from criminal prosecutions for actions within his … constitutional authority.” The court had also concluded that presidents hold “at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts” and “no immunity for unofficial acts.”

To be clear, Trump was convicted of unlawful conduct that occurred before his first term as president. And while it appears that the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling applies to both state and federal criminal prosecution, the court held there is no immunity for unofficial acts, which the falsification of business records undoubtedly is.

On Jan. 3, 2025, Justice Merchan rejected Trump’s argument regarding presidential immunity because the Supreme Court’s immunity decision is not applicable in Trump’s New York case.

On Jan. 9, 2025, New York’s highest court declined to block Trump’s sentencing. The U.S. Supreme Court late in the same day denied Trump’s emergency bid to halt the sentencing, saying in its order that “the burden that sentencing

will impose on the President-Elect’s responsibilities is relatively insubstantial in light of the trial court’s stated intent to impose a sentence of ‘unconditional discharge’ after a brief virtual hearing.”

Indeed, Merchan had expressed little willingness to impose prison time for the president-elect. In the order rejecting Trump’s presidential immunity argument, Merchan said, “It seems proper at this juncture to make known the Court’s inclination to not impose any sentence of incarceration.”

Even if Merchan imposed prison time, many constitutional law scholars, including myself, argue that Trump’s sentence would, at minimum, be deferred until after his next term in the Oval Office.

Rather, Merchan imposed “unconditional discharge” as a sentence. That means there are no penalties or conditions imposed on Trump, such as prison time or parole.

Serving the public interest, not time

According to New York law, a court “may impose a sentence of unconditional discharge … if the court, having regard to the nature and circumstances of the offense and to the history, character and condition of the defendant, is of the opinion that neither the public interest nor the ends of justice would be served by a sentence of imprisonment and that probation supervision is not appropriate.”

Regarding Trump’s case specifically, Merchan wrote, “A sentence of an unconditional discharge appears to be the most viable solution to ensure finality and allow (Trump) to pursue his appellate options.”

Put simply, it appears Merchan, having considered the totality of the circumstances, including Trump’s election to a second term as president, concluded, as is his right as a judge, that it is in the best interest of the public not to imprison Trump.

Generally, trial courts reserve a tremendous amount of discretion when it comes to imposing sentences. Legislatures can, and often do, set sentencing guidelines, prescribing what penalties trial judges can impose. It is clear in this case that the New York State Legislature allows trial judges to, at their discretion, deliver “unconditional discharge” as a sentence.

Uniquely, Trump had sought dismissal of his guilty verdict before his sentencing. Normally, criminal defendants do not have a legal right to appeal their verdicts until a final judgment is entered against them. In criminal law, a final judgment must include the defendant’s sentence.

But, of course, this is not your ordinary criminal case. As Merchan hinted, moving forward with the sentencing favored Trump because it would result in a final judgment being entered against him, thus enabling him to properly appeal his conviction.

This story has been updated to reflect the U.S. Supreme Court’s order denying Donald Trump’s bid to delay his Jan. 10 sentencing and to include the actual sentence entered against Trump.

Wayne Unger, Assistant Professor of Law, Quinnipiac University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.