Military Justice

Military justice is the legal system for adjudicating criminal allegations against active-duty members of the United States military forces and Coast Guard. All service members'criminal conduct, whether committed in the United States or abroad, in a military or civilian community, may be tried in this system of laws and courts. Military justice is separate from the civilian criminal court system, and it complements but is separate from the law of warfare, martial law, and the variety of laws pertaining to noncriminal legal requirements of the armed forces.

History

American military justice imitated British practice of the mid-eighteenth century. Drawn from Roman military law, which recognized a need for a military disciplinary system separate from civil society's criminal law provisions, British and American military justice [Page 1057]were instruments for administering whatever harsh and swift discipline a commander thought appropriate. The new Constitution invested Congress with responsibility for making “Rules for the Government and Regulation of the Land and Naval Forces …” (art. I, sec. 8), including the rules for military criminal proceedings. Major American wars, with their masses of civilian conscripts and volunteers, produced political pressure for reform and Congress responded with legislation, incrementally shifting military justice practices toward the civilian model.

A promotional drawing supporting the role of the military police from the U.S. Military Police Handbook (1975).

Widely perceived as unjust during World War II, military justice was a major postwar issue in America. In 1951, Congress enacted the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), a criminal code common to all the service branches. The new provisions pushed military justice even closer to civilian criminal law practices and stripped commanders of some of their authority over court-martial proceedings. In the late twentieth century, Congress continued making piecemeal adjustments to the UCMJ, and the system increasingly resembled the federal criminal court process.