The Broken Contract Between the State and Those Who Serve

A provactive paper by Dr Robert Parr MBE AKC,* BROKEN CONTRACT: The Legal Abandonment of British Armed Forces Personnel and the Case for Sovereign Military Operations Framework.

*Visiting Research Fellow, Changing Character of War Centre, Pembroke College, University of Oxford

ABSTRACT

British armed forces personnel are governed by a legal framework that no government designed, no Parliament deliberately enacted, and no operational commander can coherently apply. The progressive and unplanned conflation of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and International Human Rights Law (IHRL)— accelerated by extraterritorial extension of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) through the Strasbourg Court's post-2001 jurisprudence — has produced structural conditions of legal incoherence in which personnel may simultaneously comply with IHL and violate IHRL, without either framework providing the clarity or protection that operational command requires. Inevitably and foreseeably, this conflation has coincided with the changing nature of modern war, creating a toxic environment in which our armed forces have to navigate legal complexity whilst shouldering an inappropriate burden of legal risk. This paper argues that this incoherence is not primarily a legal problem. It is a political problem: a product of successive governments' failure to construct a coherent sovereign framework for military operations, to use available derogation mechanisms, and to honour the through-life contract between the state and those who serve it. The paper identifies that failure as a mechanism of betrayal — not merely of individual service personnel and veterans, but of national security itself. The paper advances a programme of parallel reconstruction built around two complementary instruments. The first is a sovereign Military Operations Act, providing domestic legal authority for lethal force and detention in both international and non-international armed conflict, both home and overseas, through ministerial authorisation, a triple-gateway prosecutorial filter; the establishment of an Expert Military Panel; and strict time limits on investigation — expressly disapplying the UK Human Rights Act (HRA) in the military operations

context by a statutory primacy clause, with full ECHR withdrawal reserved as the outer option if Strasbourg challenge follows. It is argued that the current unlimited burden of potential liability carried by our soldiers justifies this novel legal provision. The second instrument is the statutory crystallisation of the Armed Forces Covenant into a soldier/state through-life contract, transforming it from aspiration into an enforceable legal instrument. These are the instruments of a dual strategy: mutually supportive and equally essential.

The paper seems to exist in the Oxford Univ. Research Archive. Interestingly, it is referenced in JusticeForVeterans.uk. And we learn that Dr. Parr is a former active-duty Real Marine and Special Forces officer. 

Peru's Manchay Case -- civil v. military justice

You can find a worthwhile YouTube video here. Which cases should be tried in military court -- and which should not?

Trial judiciary caseload per judge per month

According to the most recent annual reports of The Judge Advocates General, in FY2025 the armed forces' 116 trial judges conducted a total of 1191 general, special and "short" courts-martial. Counting the reserve judges as 1/12 because they likely only serve on active duty for about one month per year, produces an adjusted total "purple" trial judiciary of 82.1 judges and an average caseload of only 14.51 cases/judge or 1.21 cases/judge/month. Both averages would be slightly higher if any of the Coast Guard's 10 military judges were reservists. Unlike the other annual reports, the Coast Guard's report does not distinguish between active and reserve component judges.

You can call it a decrescendo or a diminuendo, but the numbers are falling. For FY19, the average caseload per judge was 20.75 (1.73 cases/judge/month); for CY22, it was 16.19, or 1.35 cases/judge/month. What does the prediction market tell us for FY26?

Are there too many military judges?

Transforming domains: Space, military justice, and the Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corps in 2050

A retired Air Force JA has this rather interesting article. Todd Pennington, Transforming domains: Space, military justice, and the Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corps in 2050. The Space Review, 6 July 2026.

Two phenomena with inexorable momentum today will continue on their current trajectories for the foreseeable future. By 2050, I predict they will drive changes in the Air Force and the Space Force resulting in a Judge Advocate General’s Corps dramatically different from the one we know today. These two phenomena are the growth of the US Space Force (and the “space domain”) and the decline of the military justice system (and the “military justice domain”).

You might read this article for additional context. Dwight H. Sullivan, The Military Justice Decrescendo, 68 Vill. L. Rev. 849 (2024).

Where will this Spanish case be tried?

The civilian director general of Spain's Civil Guard and its uniformed deputy director of operations are both facing legal proceedings on suspicion of administrative misconduct and obstruction of justice. The deputy director could wind up in a military court instead of the National Court if he is charged with military offenses. The question may have to be decided by the Supreme Court. El Independiente has the story here.