The Ashgate Research Companion to Military Ethics, by James Turner Johnson and Eric D. Patterson

‘Ethics’, derived from the Latin word ethice, means a set of moral principles which guides actions towards ‘normative’ discipline. The origin of the field of ‘military ethics’ is distinctly credited by the editors of this book to a handful of US military officers of the 1970s/1980s, from where arose a grouping named Joint Services Committee on Professional Ethics (JSCOPE), which grew to include representation of serving officers from North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and later other militaries as well, transforming JSCOPE into its present form—the International Society for Military Ethics (ISME).