Old Glory's Rules, What the Flag Code Says and Why Most of Us Break It

Here is a fun party game for the Fourth of July. Look around the backyard and count the Flag Code violations. The paper napkins with stars on them: violation. The swimsuit with the flag on the seat: violation. The flag flying at dusk with no light on it: violation. The cake with the flag printed in frosting that you are about to cut into pieces: I will let the lawyers argue that one. By the time the fireworks start, you will have counted a dozen, and every one of them will have been committed by someone who loves the country.

That is the paradox of the United States Flag Code. It is a real federal law, in Title 4 of the United States Code. It tells you what to do with the flag, down to which way the blue field faces. Its etiquette rules carry no penalty, and most Americans have never read it. This post explains where the Code came from, what it says in plain words, and why a good citizen should know it even though nobody is going to arrest him for ignoring it. A flag does not need a police force. It needs people who understand what it stands for.

Where the Code came from

The flag itself is older than the Code by nearly a century and a half. The Continental Congress adopted its design by resolution on June 14, 1777, which is why we mark Flag Day on that date. For the first century and more of its life, the flag had no fixed etiquette.

The effort to write rules came from private organisations. On June 14, 1923, the National Flag Conference met in Washington, organised by the American Legion and joined by dozens of other organisations. The delegates adopted a code of flag etiquette. It was a set of customs written down, a collective agreement about how a respectful people would treat a symbol.

Congress did not touch it for almost two decades. Then, in 1942, as the country mobilised for the Second World War, Congress passed a joint resolution that codified the rules. The resolution was approved on June 22, 1942, and an amendment in December of that year, signed on the 22nd, revised it. That law is the ancestor of the present text, which sits in Title 4 of the United States Code, in the chapter on the flag. The structure of the chapter is worth knowing: it has sections on when and how the flag is displayed, on how to treat it with respect, on conduct during the raising, lowering and passing of the flag, and on the President's power to modify the rules.

The single most important fact: it is advisory

Before I describe a single rule, let me tell you the fact that shapes everything else. The etiquette rules of the Flag Code carry no penalties. (One other section of the same chapter makes certain commercial uses of the flag in the District of Columbia a misdemeanor, but that is a trade rule, not etiquette.) Its language is the language of "should," not "shall." It is a guide to etiquette, adopted by Congress at the urging of people who wanted a standard, and it expresses a national consensus about how to behave.

There are two reasons that matters. The first is practical: nobody can be fined or jailed under the Code for flying a flag at dusk. The second is constitutional, and it is a deeper point. In 1989 and 1990 the Supreme Court held, in Texas v. Johnson and United States v. Eichman, that burning the flag as political protest is protected by the First Amendment. The government cannot punish the expression, however offensive. Whatever we think of the burning, it follows that the Code could never be a criminal code about the flag's treatment. It is a statement of what the flag deserves, offered to free people to follow by choice. Texas v. Johnson Protected Flag Burning, and Conservatives Still Argue It tells that story.

And that is as it should be. A salute extracted under threat is not a salute. Honour that is compelled is no honour. I will come back to that.

What the Code says: display

Here are the main rules on display, in plain English.

When to fly it. It is the universal custom to display the flag only from sunrise to sunset on buildings and on stationary flagstaffs in the open. But when a patriotic effect is desired, the flag may be displayed twenty-four hours a day if it is properly illuminated during the hours of darkness. So the flag flying over the farmhouse at night is fine if there is a light on it, and not fine if there is not. The Code also says the flag should not be displayed on days when the weather is inclement, except when an all-weather flag is used.

How to raise and lower it. The flag should be hoisted briskly and lowered ceremoniously. That phrase is lovely, and it is worth saying out loud. Briskly up, slowly down. The flag should be raised to the peak first, even when it is going to half-staff.

Position and prominence. When it is flown with state or local flags on the same halyard, it is on top. In a procession it is carried on the marching right or in front of the centre of a line of other flags. When displayed against a wall, the union, the blue field, is at the top and to the flag's own right, which is the observer's left.

The distress signal. The flag should never be displayed with the union down except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property. It is the one case where the Code endorses flying it upside down, and the reason is obvious: people who see it understand that something has gone terribly wrong.

What the Code says: respect

This is the section where most of us find our own violations. The Code says the flag should never be dipped to any person or thing, and that the flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water or merchandise. It should never be carried flat or horizontally, but always aloft and free.

Then comes the list that makes the party game possible. The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding or drapery. It should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. It should not be embroidered on cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed on paper napkins or boxes, or anything designed for temporary use and discard. No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform. Advertising signs should not be fastened to a staff or halyard from which the flag is flown.

Count the violations on any American summer weekend and you will quickly lose track. And here comes the bit that complicates the picture. A flag pin on a lapel, which millions of Americans wear, is described in the Code as a replica that should be worn on the left lapel near the heart, so the Code endorses that. The Code treats the flag patch on the uniforms of military members and certain other groups as proper. So the Code is not an enemy of flags on clothes in every case. It draws a line between a lapel pin meant as a mark of respect and a bikini meant as a bikini.

Does a stars-and-stripes T-shirt violate the letter of the Code? Yes. Is the wearer disrespecting the flag? In almost every case, no. He is expressing the opposite. I think the honest view is that the letter of the Code and its spirit sometimes point in different directions, and a sensible person uses judgement. The Code itself, by being advisory, invites that. The people who wrote it in 1923 were thinking of advertisers using the flag to sell products, not of a teenager at a ball game.

Half-staff

Half-staff is the flag's way of mourning. The Code says that on Memorial Day the flag should be displayed at half-staff until noon only, then raised to the top of the staff. It also says that the President may proclaim half-staff on the death of principal figures of the United States government and the governor of a state may do so for the death of a present or former official of that state. The flag is to be hoisted to the peak for an instant before being lowered to the half-staff position.

The reason for "until noon" on Memorial Day is sometimes explained as a ceremony of honour followed by renewed resolve: we mourn the fallen in the morning, and in the afternoon we raise the flag in the name of the cause for which they died. I am quoting that as a tradition, not a provision of the Code, and a reader who wants to see exactly what the Code says about authority to order half-staff should read the chapter on Congress.gov rather than trust any summary, mine included.

Folding and retirement

Here is a surprise for many readers. The famous ceremony of folding the flag into a triangle of thirteen folds, with a meaning attached to each, is a tradition, not a provision of the Code. The Code does not set out the thirteen-fold ritual, with its explanations; that comes from military and civic custom. It is a beautiful custom and I would not talk anyone out of it. But it is a custom.

On retirement the Code is plain. When a flag is so tattered that it can no longer serve as a symbol of the United States, it should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning. Many American Legion posts and Scout troops hold retirement ceremonies on Flag Day, and a person with a worn flag can usually take it to one. A reader who wants to find a local ceremony should ask a veterans' post, and the page at the flag page on this site collects the basics in one place.

There is a point here that unsettles some people. The Code recommends burning as a respectful way to retire a flag. The Supreme Court has held that burning it as a protest is protected speech. Same act, opposite meanings, and the difference is entirely in the intent and the manner. It is a reminder that what makes a flag-burning respectful or hostile is not the fire but the purpose in the heart of the person who lights it.

Why most of us break it, and why it still matters

Why do so many well-meaning people break the Code? There are three reasons, and none is sinister.

1. Nobody teaches it. Few schools cover it. Most of us absorbed a few rules from a scout leader or a grandfather and filled the rest with common sense.
2. The commercial world ignores it. The flag on a beach towel was a market phenomenon long before anyone checked it against a code. The people who sell it are not trying to insult anyone.
3. The Code is advisory. With no penalty, no inspector and no enforcement, the Code relies on the goodwill of the public. Goodwill is plentiful but forgetful.

Does it matter? I say yes, and not because of the rules themselves. It matters because a symbol keeps its power only if people treat it as something more than a decoration. A country that handles its flag carelessly is not necessarily unpatriotic, but it risks forgetting why the flag is there. The Code is a short course in remembering: when to raise it, when to lower it, how to carry it, how to retire it. Each rule is a small act of attention, and attention is how love is practised. loving your country is not idolatry, a believer's case for patriotism argues that loving your country is no idolatry, and Country Music Still Sings About Work, Faith and Flag, and It Is No Accident looks at a culture that has always wrapped the flag in song.

The Founding angle: freedom to honour is freedom not to

The deepest lesson of the Code is a constitutional one. It is the voluntary character of patriotism. In 1943, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, the Court held that a state cannot compel schoolchildren to salute the flag, and Justice Jackson wrote that national unity may be fostered by persuasion and example, but not by compulsion. The Flag Code stands on the right side of that line. It asks. It does not force. two schoolgirls, a flag salute and the 1943 ruling that protected conscience tells the story of the two girls whose family's case reached the Court.

A free people does not need a statute to love its flag. The Founders trusted that citizens who had made a country by their own choice would honour it by their own choice. That trust has mostly been repaid. The napkins and swimsuits are the price of living in a country that is relaxed enough about its symbols to put them on everything. I would rather have a country that is occasionally careless with its flag out of affection than one that is scrupulous with it out of fear.

The case in brief

1. The Flag Code grew from the National Flag Conference of June 14, 1923, and Congress codified it in 1942. It now sits in Title 4 of the United States Code.
2. Its etiquette rules carry no penalties. Its language is "should," and after Texas v. Johnson and United States v. Eichman it could not be a criminal code about the flag's treatment.
3. Its main rules cover display (sunrise to sunset unless lit, hoisted briskly and lowered ceremoniously), respect (never touching the ground, never used as apparel or advertising), half-staff and dignified retirement. The thirteen-fold ritual is custom, not Code.
4. Most of us break it out of habit and market culture, not disrespect, and the Code's spirit matters more than its letter.
5. The Code's voluntary nature fits a free country: patriotism that is chosen is worth more than patriotism that is compelled.

What you can do: read the flag chapter of Title 4 of the United States Code on Congress.gov, take any worn flag to a local veterans' post for retirement, and visit the flag page for the basics.