The lawyer`s job therefore boils down to a highly standardized job description, which also applies to almost all other naval functions. The first problem with work is learning how to do it. The second is to make sure that happens. No practical article that anyone can write can do this job for you. You have to learn it yourself, and if your legal career matches that of this writer, your learning will be greatly accelerated by frequent looks of dark despair directed at you by people for whom you have not been able to find the answers. But learning tools are abundant and available. If you throw your hands on the contradictions and complexities of your strange new legal world, you will indeed be using these second-rate tools. Chances are, in the next few years, a big, disturbing red book will appear on your desk to sit permanently next to Dutton or the OrdAlts or the BuSandA manual or whatever else you read. If your career as a sergeant was normal, the book will not be unknown; Anyone who has served as trial or defence counsel since mid-1951 has more than knowledge of the Tribunal Martial Manual. But her enduring appearance signals an even more intimate relationship.
This means that there is a new entry in one of these columns to the right of your name on the map of your ship, squadron or station. You have moved to one of the compulsory part-time occupations. You are a lawyer. This presents you with the problem of how to keep an eye on these wandering sources of legal information. For journals like JAG Journal, this is not a particular burden. They are carefully indexed. The political system can make things more difficult. Indexing is wide, and you can spend hours searching for a statement you don`t remember very well. There are several ways to get out of this. This author, for example, keeps a consolidated list of fonts that deal with legal issues and rummages through baskets on his desk.
It is organized by theme (“motor vehicles” and “debt” are two of them). When a new policy arrives, a short description is added to the list and the policy follows the process. The Naval Justice School regularly publishes such a list for the benefit of its students. If you get your hands on one, it should give you a good start to stay in touch with the sheaf of SECNAVINSTS and BUPERSNOTES that you should know. Some legal officers from other commandos have set up a folder to handle this, organize them by subject as well, and file a card for each article, letter, note, or other piece of information they think they can assign them. Whichever way you want to do it, do it one way or another. The second lesson is that a lot of your information comes from very different sources, and you`d better build a system so you can pinpoint those sources with as little time and effort as possible. * Author`s Note: Since the writing of this article, two new and excellent publications have emerged to alleviate the dual problem of legal advisors, namely research and advice. The first is a pair of Citators and Index of Court Martial Reports covering volumes 1 to 10 and 11 to 15 of RMC; Citizens break down cumbersome CMRs in several useful ways – by subject, by laws, regulations and ordinances, by cases cited and by name of the case. For orders with a range of CMRs, they provide a quick and convenient way to short-circuit the intricacies of the Digest of Opinions. The other publication is the Air Force Court Martial Direction Writing Guide. Issued to most naval commandos as an attachment to NOTICE JAG 5810 of 14 October 1954, it is an ideal aid for the president of the special court martial who is faced with a complex case and an uninvestigated tribunal.
You start with the code and search for yourself. Glotz, SN, clearly damaged private property. Section 109 provides that any person subject to the Code who recklessly damages property other than military property of the United States shall be punished as a court martial may order. “Ah,” said the investigator. “Now look at the definition of `reckless.` They dig into the manual`s discussion of Article 109 and note that it defines recklessness as disregard for the “probable destructive results of a wilful act.” The investigator smiled triumphantly. “Glotz was negligent, that`s for sure. But I do not see how it can be described as reckless. He was driving at about fifteen miles an hour simply because he was worried about the brakes. He had no idea they were in such bad shape. If he hit a navy truck or whatever, we could charge him with negligent damage to military property.
That way, I`m afraid he`ll get away with it. You scroll down to the table of less included crimes. He agrees with the investigator; no IOLs are listed for section 109. Annex 6 also does not contain a model specification for negligent damage to private property. As for the code and the manual, Glotz did nothing for which a naval court could punish him. By carefully selecting the targets of his unbraked car, Glotz apparently beat rap. The Compendium and the C.M.R. are not the only sources that have interpreted the manual. There are others, and the sooner you learn to live with them, the easier your job will be. Take the problem, and finding a reporter for a special court martial can be a serious problem on a small ship or isolated base. Many commanders will be reluctant to spare a man for work, and if they know their manual, they can refer to paragraph 7, which states, inter alia, that “the summoning authority, if it deems it appropriate, may order that a rapporteur not be appointed by special tribunals”.
The problem is that one of those other things in the paragraph says that “the secretary of a department may require or restrict the appointment of journalists to summary and special courts.” In this case, the Secretary of the Navy decided to require one; This is stated in Article 0103 of the Naval Supplement to the Manual. In this case, complacent reliance on the manual can quickly bring up the unrelated court martial transcript from the hands of the review body, coupled with a targeted investigation by the Commander-in-Chief as to why you failed to correct it. If the manual leaves an option to the secretary of a department, it is a safe bet that the secretary acted accordingly. In the case of the Navy, these actions of the Secretary are conveniently summarized in the Marine Supplement. Probably the strongest sandbar the new legal counsel faces is this standard problem: if I don`t know, where can I find it? Much of the Navy`s doctrine is expounded in detailed, almost comprehensive publications with their ubiquitous changes. Keep your required publications up to date, and you`ll be on reasonably safe ground. Maritime justice is a little different. Naval law, like civil law, is a changing and unresolved issue that is constantly changing with the support and court staff who interpret and apply it. Any court martial convened on your orders may eventually make its own small change to the law. Your first major task is to familiarize yourself with the various sources that the Navy has provided to keep you informed of these constant changes in the law. Your personal equipment will not be as standardized. If you are a lawyer, adapting to Navy procedure will be easy, and this article is not for you.
But chances are overwhelming that you`re not. At best, you have completed seven weeks of intensive teaching at the Naval Justice School in Newport. Then you already have an admirable range of practical experience to bring to your work. You may have taken one of the many excellent correspondence courses that deal with the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And you may have changed your new job from working in communications or cougars with no experience in naval justice. It is for you, the collateral legal advisor without legal training, that this article is written. Later in their careers, officers were nominated for courses at IML Kamptee, Nagpur and also at various other prestigious law schools. The Judge Advocate General (JAG) Department is the legal arm of the Indian Naval Service. A judge advocate is appointed under section 168 of the Marine Act 1957 and is considered a bailiff.
The primary role of a JAG Officer is to provide independent, operationally-focused, solution-oriented legal advice and services across the spectrum of maritime law in support of naval operations and sound naval administration. The JAG Department is the cornerstone of Indian Navy law and contributes professionally to disciplined armed forces, with targeted legal solutions in the execution of legal and judicial tasks. You will soon find that your work is roughly divided into two parts. First, you are accountable to your Commander for the administration of maritime justice under your command, just as your personnel office has taken over personnel processing procedures. They will ensure that the perpetrators are duly brought to Mast, that courts martial are properly convened, that the necessary records are kept and that the necessary measures are taken.