VanLandingham Skewers NDAA

FY22 NDAA: A Missed Opportunity to Improve Military Justice

​"Congress should clean up the unprincipled mess they have created in the military justice system under the FY22 NDAA, and instead pass MJIIPA as a standalone bill. Better still would be to amend MJIIPA to remove commanders’ prosecutorial authority over all crimes, even military-unique ones (which include capital offenses such as desertion). All criminal allegations against service members deserve fair, independent, and unbiased treatment, which is not what occurs under the current system. Those in uniform deserve far better than what they have just been handed."

Rachel VanLandingham

Rachel E. VanLandingham (@rachelv12), a professor of law at Southwestern Law School, is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and former military attorney, the President of the National Institute of Military Justice, and co-author of Military Justice: Cases and Materials (Carolina Academic Press 3d ed. 2020).