The Reform of Military Justice

Abstract

At the conclusion of World War I a committee established by the United Kingdom Army Council was tasked with examining the ‘law and rules of procedure regulating Military Courts-Martial, both in peace and war, and to make recommendations’. In its 1919 report to Parliament, the committee began by noting the ‘enormous expansion of the Army during the European war’ and the ‘corresponding increase in the number of Courts-Martial’. Sadly, it also stated that the difficulties in dealing with the volume of legal work were exacerbated by the fact that ‘so many of the regular officers who were familiar with military law’ were lost in the first few months of the war. The need for reinforcements ‘render..