The JAG Corps, or Judge Advocate General’s Corps, of the @USArmy provides legal services for the force. But the JAG Corps is not just all lawyers.
While the JAG Officers do tend to be lawyers, there are also NCOs and other enlisted personnel serving as paralegals, as well as warrant officers and civilians.
As with many of the other branches we’ve discussed so far, the JAG Corps began in 1775, when we formed our United States Army, and the first leader of the JAG Corps, The Judge Advocate General, was William Tudor.
(This guy)
The foundation of military law is the Uniform Code of Military Justice or UCMJ, which was established in accordance with US Constitution Article I Section 8: “Congress shall have power… to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces.”
The UCMJ was initially set up in June of 1775 with 69 Articles of War used to govern the Continental Army. As with other legislation, UCMJ has changed a bit over the years, as the Army recognizes its own changing needs.
Technically, the JAG Corps is the oldest existing law firm in the United States. Although it is still quite different from the typical non-military law firm.
Growing concern in the mid- to late-1800s with regard to international relations and international law was seen with the Lieber Code (1863) and also in US military participation in several conferences on the law of war at The Hague and in Geneva.
And World War I brought us a “predecessor to the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Act of 1940, which was to become the foundation for one of the major new missions of the [JAG] Corps – free legal counsel to the individual soldier about his personal affairs.”
WWI would also demonstrate that “the 1916 revision of the Articles of War had not eliminated many of what were considered major faults in the military justice system. The Articles had not been drafted to govern an Army of 200,000 officers and nearly four million men.”
Sweeping reform to the military justice system was proposed in 1919 and the “hoped-for legislation was revolutionary” at the time.
(The pic is of Brigadier General Samuel Tilden Ansell, who pushed for these changes.)
Among the proposed changes were:
“A number of punitive provisions of the Articles of War should be rewritten to delineate the elements of the crimes, to establish a maximum punishment for each offense, and to remove vague and ambiguous language;”
“The 1917 Manual requirement that the officer exercising summary court-martial jurisdiction over the accused make a preliminary investigation of the charges, and give the accused an opportunity to make a statement or present evidence, would become statutory law.”
Also, “among the crucial aspects of any court-martial were the personnel sitting on the court and the method of their selection. The Chamberlain bill would have required exactly eight members of a general court-martial and three for a special court-martial.”
“It also would have altered the commander’s power to select the court and to control it during the trial.”
There is a whole list and more detail in The Army Lawyer (link in the references at the end of the thread) but not all of these proposed changes were approved at the time. Change is a process.
The JAG School began during WWII out of a need to quickly train and prepare lawyers to serve as Judge Advocates in the rapidly expanding US Army.
The modern JAG Corps plays a very significant role in the @USArmy – these Officers are “exposed to a broad spectrum of legal practice” and have opportunities early in their careers to make valuable contributions to the entire organization.
TV shows and movies tend to focus on the courtroom excitement but in reality, JAG Officers do far more than just trials.
JAG Officers, or Judge Advocates, typically “rotate legal disciplines every one to two years, and move to a different installation every two to three years” which is similar to the PCS schedule of many other Branches.
Judge Advocates have a sort of double career in that they are both lawyers and Army Officers. They participate in physical fitness, leadership development, and other “Army stuff” while also building their legal experience.
They benefit from collaborative efforts within the @USArmy – with others’ opinions and perspectives weighing in as needed.
They also benefit from diverse experience as lawyers in the US Army, with immediate exposure to a wide range of legal practice areas including but not limited to international law, criminal law, legal assistance, civil litigation, and operational law.
Operational Law is particularly interesting in the context of this series and with the modern LSCO focus. It “encompasses the law of war and all domestic, military, foreign, and international law affecting the conduct of military operations.”
“Judge Advocates support humanitarian relief operations to full-scale combat. While deployed, Judge Advocates respond to legal questions about rules of engagement, targeting, intelligence law, and
detainee operations.”
“Judge Advocates support the commander’s military decision-making process and the conduct of operations with planning, advice, and analysis.”
In essence, these Judge Advocates are involved in all parts of the @USArmy and they are essential to planning and decision-making processes.
If you would like to read more about the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, the following may prove interesting:
Treaties, States Parties and Commentaries – Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field (Lieber Code). 24 April 1863. ihl-databases.icrc.org/ihl/INTRO/110
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Operation Chastise was a night bombing raid carried out by the @RoyalAirForce on the evening of 16 May 1943. This raid is also referred to as the Dambusters Raid because the bombers were targeting several dams in the Ruhr industrial area, in western Germany.
The Möhne Dam, the Sorpe Dam, and the Eder Dam. Destruction would affect hydroelectric power plants as well as the industries depending on the water. There was also potential for flooding cities and nearby areas if the dams were broken.
It seems like it’s about time for a #TankTwitter thread, so today we will talk about the first, largely intact, Tiger I captured by the Allies.
The Tiger I was a heavy tank that provided Hitler’s army with the first armored fighting vehicle to feature a mounted 88mm gun. It was big and scary, and it was expensive, both to build and to maintain, which is partly why only a little over 1300 were built.
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“In their January attacks Axis units puzzled Allied commanders by limiting their own advances and abandoning key positions. Soon, however, the enemy displayed more determination.”
On Tuesday, we talked about the secret multi-day trip that President Roosevelt took from the White House on 9 JAN to Casablanca, arriving on 14 JAN, in order to attend a highly classified series of meetings with his British counterpart, Winston Churchill.
This conference involved both FDR and Churchill, and their most trusted senior staff and senior military leaders. During the meetings they established the way forward for the Allies in this war, mapping out “the grand strategy for both the European and the Pacific Theaters.”
George Patton was put in command of the Western Task Force, which sailed from the east coast of the US right to Morocco for Operation Torch. The other two task forces sailed from the UK.
Patton was on the USS Augusta, which was under the command of Admiral Hewitt (next to Patton in the picture). That little pouch on the front of Patton's belt is actually a police handcuff pouch but Patton used it for a compass.
Everyone knows that the United States used two atomic bombs in the Pacific in World War II, and that the US was the only nation in the war to use this new type of weapon. This week we will take a look at the efforts to create these bombs.
The Manhattan Project technically ran from 1942 until 1946, but the American effort itself had actually started in 1939, and we had British counterparts already working on nuclear weapons development by the time the United States jumped on that train.⚛️