Cave Responds to Schlueter & Schenck

CAAFlog executive editor Phil Cave published this op-ed yesterday in The Hill:

Congress, not the courts, say who has authority to court-martial servicemembers

"More troubling is [Schlueter & Schenck's] misapplication of the Supreme Court’s Solorio v. United States decision by suggesting that the court somehow requires commanders to decide to prosecute at court-martial. And, they allude to unspecified difficulties in prosecuting cases — something irrelevant to who decides to prosecute. In 1987, the services successfully prosecuted 8,600 general and special courts martial. Did some challenge the service-connection for their prosecution? Yes, some did but not enough that courts martial became “unworkable.” The statistics are publicly available.


Solorio reversed O’Callahan v. Parker and Relford v. Commandant by saying that the Constitution precluded court-martial prosecution of a service member for crimes in the civilian community; if they were not “service-connected.” However, neither O’Callahan nor Solorio said anything about who should make the prosecution decision."