Slate: Goodbye to George III
Eugene Fidell wrote an article Slate.com, that succinctly explains why Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s Military Justice Improvement Act (MJIA) is desperately needed, and the only legislation that would bring fundamental reform to a broken military justice system:
Civilian control of the military is part of our constitutional culture. Indeed, it is hard-wired into the text of the Constitution. Article I confers on the civilian Congress the power to “make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.” Article II makes the civilian president the “Commander in Chief” of the Army and Navy. To be true to the founders’ vision, Congress must not uncritically accept the military’s unjustified insistence on retaining outdated command-centric features of the system the country inherited from George III.
Retired officers have every right to speak their mind. So did the incumbent service chiefs and JAGs when they testified in unison against reform before the Senate Armed Services Committee last June. By all means, let their voices be heard. But on the basic structural question of who decides which cases go to court-martial, Congress must take its own counsel and that of the public, most of which wisely favors broad systemic change of the kind Gillibrand’s measure would bring. The path to a 21st-century military justice system and improved public confidence in the administration of military justice runs through the Capitol, not the Pentagon.
