While in service I visited the United States as a guest of the United States Air Force. As I was sometimes a presiding court-martial officer in India (being legally qualified), I was interested in how US military law works. One significant difference is that in the US, there is currently a Military Code which applies to all 4 service arms namely army, air force, navy and coast guard whereas in India we have a separate military code for each service. .
The Unified Military Code is relatively recent and was only signed into law by President Truman in 1951. Prior to this, the code was amorphous and had very few checks and balances. American military law took nearly 175 years to evolve into the current Unified Military Code.
The United States was a colony of England until 1776, until a colonists’ war of independence against the English army led to the creation of the American state. To begin with, the new state adopted the British codes for the American armed forces. The US military now adopted what is known as the Articles of War of 1775. These were derived from British law and consisted of 69 sections. the American military code is credited to John Adams, who was a lawyer at the time. He later became the President of the United States. The Articles of War found wide acceptance and were ratified at the Continental Army Conference.
The articles of war were an exact copy of British law, changed and some amendments were added in 1806. A team of military experts and lawyers studied the codes of many nations, including France, and raised sections 69 to 101. The code provided for summary execution and, in some cases, the commanding officer of the unit at the time of the battle, if convinced, could order the execution of a combatant. There was no appeal. The code was effective and instilled discipline in the US military. it was widely used in the US civil war from 1861 to 1865.
The beauty of this code was that it continued for almost 150 years, without question. The first time the code was questioned was in the period of the First World War when 13 black soldiers were summarily hanged for “riot”. Later he realized that the punishment was excessive and since there was no appeal, the sentence was carried out immediately. It was also mentioned that the greatest crime of the soldiers was that they were black.
To prevent a drop in morale, Secretary of Defense Newton D Barker intervened. He ordered that no executions could henceforth be carried out without referring the matter to Washington. Thus an important change was effected in the military code.
After the end of World War II, the three Chiefs of Staff appointed a committee to simplify American military law. The committee devised the Unified Military Code which became law beginning in 1951. A significant change was that a series of checks and balances were introduced and the code became more humane. Death became an exception and not a rule. This code is now fashionable in the United States. In India, experts are also working on a unified code for all 3 services.