ABSTRACT
The Military Covenant highlights the distinction between moral and legal contracts, which is the key theme of this chapter. Aristotle underlined the delineation between moral and legal spheres: Now it seems that, as justice is of two kinds, one unwritten and the other legal, one kind of friendship of utility is moral and the other legal'. This chapter aims to establish why the Army developed the concept of the Military Covenant, and, in doing so, what it intended to communicate both to soldiers and civilian society. It examines nature of trust and the risks inherent in trust. Violations of trust within any workplace can destroy the so-called psychological contract, an entity that is also examined. Following the Covenant's migration, many civilians seized upon the concept, among them policy-makers, the media and the third sector. A legally-based covenant in the context of the Military Covenant is a contradiction in terms, reducing the unique nature of military service to the transactional.
