through March 29, 2022.
"After Mr. Vance entered a guilty plea before the Ontario Court of Justice, he was granted a conditional discharge which will spare him a criminal record on those charges. He was sentenced to 12 months probation and 80 hours of community service."
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The new rights include providing access to information about their case as well as specially designated liaison officers who will help victims navigate the military justice system, and access to a complaint mechanism if they feel their rights have been violated.
Acting judge advocate general Col. Robin Holman said numerous regulations needed to be changed to reflect the rights named in the declaration, while consultations were held with victims’ groups to capture their perspectives.
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Chapter 1 Peoples’ Liberation Army: An Introduction
Chapter 2 Military Administration in China
Chapter 3 Military Legal System in China
Chapter 4 Military Criminal Law and Procedure
Chapter 5 Military Court System and Trial
Chapter 6 Discipline Related Offences and Punishments
Chapter 7 The Right to a Fair Trial
Chapter 8 Corruption in PLA and Military Legal System
Chapter 9 Gestalt
Congratulations!
The application for a partial stay presented to JUSTICE ALITO and by him referred to the Court is granted. The district court’s January 3, 2022 order, insofar as it precludes the Navy from considering respondents’ vaccination status in making deployment, assignment, and other operational decisions, is stayed pending disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and disposition of the petition for a writ of certiorari, if such writ is timely sought. Should the petition for a writ of certiorari be denied, this order shall terminate automatically. In the event the petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, the order shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of this Court.Justice Thomas would deny the request and Justices Gorsuch and Alito dissent.
through March 23, 2022.
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| Majors Tamar Bekia Adgach and Mazi Mekonen (IDF Photo) |
Global Military Justice Reform will continue to report the cumulative total until either (a) the current vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces is filled or (b) one of the eight eligible senior judges is recalled to sit with the four judges in regular active service to rule on petitions for grant of review.
Orders denying review could usefully note whether a petitioner had briefed any issues or the petition included Grostefon issues. Alternatively, the court could issue a Notice indicating (if that is the policy) that, for the remainder of the current hiatus, it will only deny petitions in cases that have been submitted on their merits and in which no Grostefon issues have been personally asserted by the petitioner.
To date during this lengthy interregnum, the Daily Journal discloses no motions to withhold action on a petition until the vacancy caused by expiration of Chief Judge Scott W. Stucky's term has been filled or a senior judge is recalled to act on petitions.
The 1999 Russian Federation Law on Military Courts can be found here.
Meanwhile, Russia issued a warning that foreign fighters — Russian President Vladimir Putin calls them "mercenaries" — will be treated harshly. On March 3, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenko warned that foreign fighters will not be afforded the rights of lawful combatants under international law.
"At best, they can expect to be prosecuted as criminals," he said. "We are urging all foreign citizens who may have plans to go and fight for Kyiv's nationalist regime to think a dozen times before getting on the way."
Sean Timmons also strikes a cautionary note at Military.com for would-be volunteers who are veterans of the U.S. armed forces.
August 2021, 25
September 2021, 19
October 2021, 17
November 2021, 20
December 2021, 17
January 2022, 25
February 2022, 20
March 1-16, 2022, 13
Total, 156
As per the constitutional
scheme and also law laid down by Constitution Benches of the Supreme Court,
orders from tribunals are amenable to the jurisdiction of the High Courts.
However, the Supreme Court in a judgment rendered in 2015, had held that since
an appellate provision for a direct appeal to the Supreme Court was provided from
the orders of the AFT within the AFT Act, the High Courts should refrain from exercising
their writ jurisdiction for judicial review.
This practically
rendered litigants remediless from the orders of the AFT since as per the Act,
only matters involving a “point of law of general public importance” can be
appealed to the Supreme Court from the AFT, meaning thereby that issues that
are personal to the litigant, cannot be challenged in any forum and the AFT
practically becomes the Court of first and last instance. Approaching the
Supreme Court directly makes justice inaccessible and unaffordable for the
common litigant.
In 2019 however, another
bench of the Supreme Court had held that the writ jurisdiction of the High Courts
provided in the Constitution, High Courts being constitutional courts, cannot
be taken away even by legislation and that High Courts can exercise judicial
review over AFT.
The Delhi High Court
has now laid down the areas of litigation where High Courts can exercise judicial
review over the AFT, essentially holding that High Courts can intervene in
cases which do not involve “a point of law of general public importance”.
The judgment and related details can be accessed here at Bar & Bench.
Query what military justice fallout this conflict may have. It will be years before we know.
U.S. Court of Military Appeals: abbreviated as CMA, but pronounced like "coma" -- and no, it's not "the CMA."
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces: not pronounced "us-caf" or see-double-A-eff. And no definite article. Just say CAF (rhymes with "calf").
U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals: ACCA (ack-uh), no definite article. For all other CCAs, use the definite article, since otherwise they sound weird (e.g., how to say "CGCCA"?).
Yes, it's "the TJAG" when referring to Numero Uno, pronounced tea-jag. See also dee-jag.
Department of Defense: dee-oh-dee, no definite article. Federal-agencyspeak is totally inconsistent on this kind of thing: we refer to the Department of Justice as "DOJ" (no definite article) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as FERC ("furk") (same), but use the definite article when referring to the IRS, the SEC, or the FCC.
National Institute of Military Justice: NIMJ, no definite article, and pronounced to rhyme (roughly) with "binge" not with "ninja." Or en-eye-em-jay.
Last but not least: 10-yard penalty for "military court-martial" or "court-martials."
Your move.
[Abderrazak] Kilani faces charges of “disturbing the public order,” “insulting public officials,” and “inciting [members of the security forces] by violence, assault, threats, or fraudulent practices to cease performing their individual or collective duties,” under articles 79, 125, and 136 of the penal code, Samir Dilou, one of his lawyers, told Human Rights Watch. The military court claims jurisdiction apparently because the speech in question was addressed to members of the security forces, Ridha Belhaj, another of his lawyers said. Kilani faces up to seven years in prison if convicted.
Kilani, 67, served as a deputy prime minister for relations with the Constituent Assembly from 2011 to 2013. He also has served as head of the bar association and as ambassador to the UN in Geneva. He is active in the Citizens against the Coup, an informal group of Tunisians who openly oppose [Kais] Saied’s seizure of special powers.
Human rights jurisprudence strongly disfavors the trial of civilians by military courts.
“Military Prosecutor Doberman[n]” is a new drama about two military prosecutors who chose the job for very different reasons—but who ultimately wind up coming together to fight evil. Ahn Bo Hyun stars as Do Bae Man, an apathetic prosecutor who only took the job for money, while Jo Bo Ah stars as heiress Cha Woo In, who became a military prosecutor for revenge.
failed to (1) serve the client with skill and care, (2) represent the client zealously and diligently within the bounds of the law; (3) keep the client reasonably informed about the status of the matter and promptly comply with reasonable requests for information; (4) withdraw from the representation when his physical or mental condition materially impaired his ability to represent the client; and (5) return the client file after multiple request in violation of Rules 1.1(b), 1.3(a), 1.4(a), 1.6(a)(2), and 1.16(d).
According to Cuban lawyer Julio Ferrer, consulted by the aforementioned media outlet [Radio Television Martí]," many of the protesters of July 11 have been subjected to military jurisdiction and tried by military courts, especially those who were or took part in the events that took place in relation to the TRD stores."
Ferrer explained that the trial in a military court is due to the fact that the TRD stores belong to the Revolutionary Armed Forces, for which the regime considers that the Güira de Melena protesters who broke up these stores should be prosecuted in said courts.
The trial of civilians by military courts is strongly disfavored by human rights jurisprudence, including that of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
The corresponding report of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces was released some time ago and can be found here.
Postscript: Col. (ret) Don Christensen has this number-crunching post over at CAAFlog.
The separate service reports perpetuate the problem of non-comparable data. The footnotes to the charts vary from service to service. Who is going to integrate the data on a system-wide basis? Congress?
Quaere: how will this issue play out at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces--or has it already done so? The court's rules formerly referred to a supervisory power but this was deleted in 2015. The Rules Advisory Committee's comments may be found in Fidell, Fissell & Sullivan, Guide to the Rules of Practice and Procedure for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces §§ 5.02 & 21.02 (20th ed. 2021). The committee noted that in Clinton v. Goldsmith, 526 U.S. 529, 536 (1999), the Supreme Court wrote that "the CAAF is not given authority, by the All Writs Act or otherwise, to oversee all matters arguably related to military justice or to act as a plenary administrator of final judgments it has affirmed." The committee observed: "This is not to say that supervisory authority does not exist, only that it is not as expansive as it was pre-Goldsmith, and its contours will need to be resolved in future cases." The question now is whether, in matters squarely within its jurisdiction, the Court of Appeals may exercise the kind of supervisory power the First Circuit had exercised and that was addressed in Tsarnaev.
Comments welcome. (Real names only, as always.)
But Doe poses the bigger threat. He is currently the commanding officer of a warship that may soon set sail. If he falls seriously ill at sea—which is more likely because he refuses the vaccine—he may thwart the entire mission. The issue, however, goes deeper than that. In declarations, Vice Admiral D.W. Dwyer and Captain Frank Brandon explained that Doe’s anti-vax beliefs are part of a broader pattern of insubordination. Brandon testified that last November, he spoke with Doe on Doe’s ship one day before its scheduled departure. Doe was experiencing multiple symptoms of COVID, and appeared to have a relatively severe case; he could, Brandon recalled, “barely speak.” Yet Doe refused to get tested—a clear violation of protocol—and attended a briefing in a cramped room with about 60 other people. Brandon ordered Doe to get a test, which revealed that he did, indeed, have COVID, and exposed dozens of others to the virus.
Doe engaged in other deceptive behavior. For instance, when requesting leave, he concealed the fact that he was flying to another state, which would have triggered a mandatory risk assessment. After Brandon discovered this subterfuge, he learned that Doe had traveled to a high-risk area, requiring five days’ quarantine upon return. Doe did not inform his Executive Officer of this extended absence, creating a “significant and very rare” disruption “across the waterfront” during a crucial phase of ship preparation. Brandon concluded that Doe “intentionally deceived me,” “put his crew at risk,” “failed to comply with the Navy’s COVID-19 policies,” and engaged in “negligent behavior” in “performance of his duties.”
“I do not trust [Smith] with the lives of our Sailors,” Brandon testified. He continued:
I am responsible for the well-being of my Squadron, including welfare of my ships and the health of my sailors. My loss of confidence in [Smith] is … based on the fact that I cannot trust his judgment, I cannot trust him to look after the welfare of his sailors, and I cannot trust him to be honest with me. In my judgment, allowing him to remain in command of a Navy warship would be reckless.
From the summary.
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Central Intelligence Agency believed that Abu Zubaydah was a senior al Qaeda lieutenant likely to possess knowledge of future attacks against the United States. Zubaydah—currently a detainee at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base—says that in 2002 and 2003 he was held at a CIA detention site in Poland, where he was subjected to “enhanced interrogation” techniques. In 2010, Zubaydah filed a criminal complaint in Poland, seeking to hold accountable any Polish nationals involved in his alleged mistreatment at the CIA site ostensibly located in that country. The United States denied multiple requests by Polish prosecutors for information related to Zubaydah’s claim on the ground that providing such information would threaten national security. Zubaydah filed a discovery application pursuant to 28 U. S. C. §1782, which permits district courts to order production of testimony or documents “for use in a proceeding in a foreign . . . tribunal.” Zubaydah asked for permission to serve two former CIA contractors with subpoenas requesting information regarding the alleged CIA detention facility in Poland and Zubaydah’s treatment there. The Government intervened and asserted the state secrets privilege in opposition to Zubaydah’s discovery request. The District Court rejected the Government’s claim that merely confirming that a detention site was operated in Poland would threaten national security.
The District Court nevertheless dismissed Zubaydah’s discovery application. It concluded that the state secrets privilege applied to operational details concerning the CIA’s cooperation with a foreign government, and that meaningful discovery could not proceed without disclosing privileged information. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the District Court that much of the information sought by Zubaydah was protected from disclosure by the state secrets privilege, but the panel majority concluded that the District Court had erred when it dismissed the case. It believed that the state secrets privilege did not apply to publicly known information. The panel majority also concluded that because the CIA contractors were private parties and not Government agents, they could not confirm or deny anything on the Government’s behalf. Given these holdings, the panel majority determined that discovery into three topics could continue: the existence of a CIA detention facility in Poland, the conditions of confinement and interrogation at that facility, and Zubaydah’s treatment at that location.
Held: The judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded
When troops lay down their weapons and refuse to use them to prosecute an illegal war, they take significant personal risk to do the right thing by the law’s own lights. States have a collective duty to protect them in that endeavor.
"I signed 80 bipartisan bills into law last year. From preventing government shutdowns to protecting Asian Americans from still-too-common hate crimes to reforming military justice."
Talk in the glass-enclosed newsroom high above Global Military Justice Reform Plaza was that this was a first.
