While the military power must necessarily be absolute for the time being, and beyond the control of the civil authorities so far as it is lawfully exercised, yet it is regarded as exceptional and, so far as it affects persons not in the military or naval service, temporary. The civil law, by which term is here meant the general law both civil and criminal administered by the ordinary courts, is the law which governs individuals in all cases except as they may be outside of the civil law by reason of being in the army or navy, or of being in a region where martial law has been declared and the ordinary operations of the courts suspended. The civil courts cannot interfere with the proceedings of courts-martial so far as they have jurisdiction (Dynes v. Hoover); but, on the other hand, courts-martial cannot exclude the general jurisdiction of the civil courts. Even persons who are in the military or naval service and are therefore subject to the military law are not thereby exempted from obedience to the civil law, and may be required to answer in the ordinary courts for their acts in violation of the general law. Thus a soldier may be tried in the regular courts for murder or other crime committed by him, even though he may have been already tried therefor as a violation of the military law by a court-martial. Whether a soldier is to be held individually responsible for acts done under orders or authority of his superior officers or the general military power, is a wholly different question. He may be justified for thus acting if the occasion is one for the exercise of military authority, but his justification is to be determined when he is called upon to account for his acts in the regular courts. The general supremacy of the civil over the military authority is fully recognized in England and the United States, and is one of the essential features of our constitutional system. The maintenance by the king of standing armies in the colonies in time of peace and his subordination of the civil to the military power are among the grievances enumerated in the Declaration of Independence.