SENATOR< COLONEL, BUT NOT JUDGE

(reposted from jagcentral)

I have to confess, my only involvement with military law issues lately has been: (1) working on a law review-type article that may never be completed; and (2) hitting "refresh" on CAAF's opinions website to see if U.S. v. Lane had been handed down. The decision was handed down yesterday, and if you are reading this post you probably already know that the court held that Senator Graham's participation on the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals panel was reversible error. It is not clear whether the Solicitor General will file for cert.; what IS clear is all of the cases decided by Sen. Graham's panel (since Lane's case, if the objection was raised and preserved) will have to be reversed and remanded. So here's a handful of links on the subject. If I can find the time, I will try to update the list a bit, but as previous posting schedules demonstrate, the time is difficult to pin down.

• The Amicus Brief filed by the ACLU-National Capitol Region and the NIMJ


• Volokh Conspiracy - with my disjointed and mistyped comments


• How Appealing


• SCOTUS Blog

I'm sure there will be more. A few of the commentators on Volokh said that if Sen. Graham's service as an appellate military judge violates Art I. Sec. 6, then so does his status as a reservist officer. Probably so, but that's none of CAAF's business and I'm not sure who would have standing to raise that claim.

One interesting tidbit: At the end of this month, Chief Judge Gierke (who authored the opinion of the court) and (formerly Chief) Judge Crawford (who wrote the dissent) will step down. (Their 15 year terms end on the same day, I think it's Sept. 30). If and when the President nominates new judges, those nominations will be taken up by the Senate Armed Services Comm., where Sen. Graham is a member. I believe, with some evidentiary support, that Sen. Graham is a very careful and ethical person. But I wonder if he could ask the nominees about the Lane case. This is especially throny if the government / solicitor general files a petition for cert., because then there is the very real possibility that the issue would be back before CAAF.

NEW JUDGES FOR CAAF

On December 4, the Senate Armed Services Committee considered the President's nominees to fill the vacancies on CAAF: Scott W. Stucky and Margaret A. Ryan. Perhaps some of you know the nominees personally, I would welcome your comments. Here's what I could find:

Stucky:

SASC written responses

As you can see here, Mr. Stucky is currently General Counsel of the SASC.

An article / panel discussion: "US has learned lessons on detainee treatment," Nov. 2005 at UVA Law School. Notable for the following picture and breakout quotation from Mr. Stucky:

The conditions under which prisoners are held at Guantanamo "I don’t think would approximate inhumane treatment,” said Scott Stucky.

He also talked about procedural irregularities in Senators McCain and Graham's early attempts to fix the detainee situation. That is much more interesting stuff to law nerds, but for some reason the PR people at UVA's human rights center didn't seem to think so.

Ryan:
SASC written responses
WRF profile
EDIT: I found the following photo of Ms. Ryan on the WRF site (rehosted by imageshack, but only because I don't know how long her profile will be available on WRF.com):


Finally, the first two opinions of 2007 term have been released. Both unanimous decisions by the three active judges; I do not know how they decide when and whether to include Senior Judges.

One final note: It looks like the diskspace is almost full for JAGCentral. If so, this might be the last post.

Temporary fix

Hi, this is a temporary target for everyone who visits the jagcentral site. My most recent post wouldn't fit, because the site has reached its maximum bandwidth. It is possible to harvest all the content from that site and move it somewhere else, but everything belongs to the Centrist.

Whether the Centrist moves the blog to somewhere with more space, or whether I or someone else starts a new site, or whether the site doesn't die but just fades away, is (at least in part) up to the readers. My ambitious plans for new and different content haven't panned out yet, and I'm working on a few other distractions (like helping with kids and studying for the bar).

What does all this mean to you? Well, if you leave a comment to this post, I will know that you occasionally read the jagcentral site, and I will communicate that information to anyone else who might want to take up the cause. If you do not, then I will assume you do not.