Are there too many military judges?

12/11/2020

Over at GMJR, editor Gene Fidell makes his case: he compares the military justice system with a jurisdiction of comparable size (Kansas), noting that Kansas's judges have a caseload of 194.4 per year, while military judges have a caseload of 20.75 per year.

Link here.

1 Comment

Poster

12/11/2020 08:06:45 pm

There are arguments both ways:
About a month ago I put forward the idea that the vitality, for lack of a better word, in development is due not to having the best of any participants. Rather it was a product of having a high concentration of participants. I used the model of hockey players in the NHL from Sweden.
The same can be said for pilots. The Air Force has the best pilots. But every pilot in the Navy is a good pilot. Why? It’s because they have to land on carriers.
So having a high concentration of above average military judges is better than a lot of judges. Maybe.

The system is built for large scale conflict. Wars of national determination. It is not built, or at least it wasn't, for small scale conflicts. So you need more judges available for the contingency. Maybe not. If you have a bunch of guys simply on the payroll for use undetermined, they can't help but become more institutionalized. So their objectivity is questionable.

But what you don't want, under any circumstance, is a billet being filled just because you have nowhere else to put someone.

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CAAFlog

Are there too many military judges?

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