Military Justice: Articles of War (1775 – 1950)
This entry is a subentry of Military Justice.
Articles of War was the term used to describe the statutes governing military discipline and justice in the American armed services from 1775 to 1950, when they were replaced by the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
With the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress in 1775 adopted two codes of military law: the “Rules for the Regulation of the Navy of the United Colonies” and the “American Articles of War” (the latter revised in 1776). Both were written by John Adams—then an attorney, representative from Massachusetts, and chair of the Naval Committee—and both were drawn largely from the codes governing the Royal Navy and the British army.
After the adoption of the Constitution and the establishment of the federal government, the first Congress merely stated that the provisions from the earlier period would continue to apply. The U.S. Navy was expanded in the late 1790s, and in 1799, Congress adopted an Act for Government of the Navy, revising the Continental Rules. These also applied to the Marine Corps, as part of the navy. A year later, Congress passed the Articles for the Government of the Navy (1800). Within the navy, this governing statute was nicknamed “Rocks and Shoals” because that phrase was included in the provision authorizing punishment for those responsible for damage to ships due to improper navigation. The statute was amended periodically to reflect changes in the service. In one important reform of discipline, flogging (the whipping of sailors with a lash) was abolished as a punishment in 1850. An amendment in 1855 authorized summary courts‐martial, with a single officer sitting as the military tribunal. During the dramatic, if temporary, expansion of the navy in the Civil War, the Articles for the Government of the Navy were recompiled, and this compilation, as amended, remained in effect through World War II. The navy's ambitious plans to rewrite the articles after 1945 were overtaken by the drive for “unification” of the armed services and by the passage of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which was modeled largely after the army's Articles of War.
The Articles of War governing discipline and justice in the army, first formulated in 1775 and revised in 1776, underwent minor revisions in 1806 by John Quincy Adams, son of the original drafter. The basic Articles of War remained in effect for 111 years, from 1776 to 1917. During that period, there were a number of important changes: one in 1830 regarding the appointment of courts‐martial; and several during the Civil War, primarily intended to extend courts' jurisdiction over crimes and persons. Some articles of the code were deleted, such as those relating to irreverent or indecent behavior at worship services, or the use of oaths or other offensive utterances.
The Articles of War were substantially revised to deal with the mass army of citizen‐soldiers in World War I. At the instigation of Enoch Crowder, judge advocate general of the U.S. Army, Congress passed a complete revision in March 1917. There were major problems with this revision, however. For example, in November 1917, under its wartime provisions, thirteen black enlisted men were too hastily executed after a court‐martial following a race riot in Houston. Secretary of War Newton D. Baker prohibited any further executions without express approval from Washington. During World War I, a number of other citizen‐soldiers were sentenced to long prison terms or even to death for breaches of military discipline, although these sentences were subsequently modified. Widespread complaints in the press and Congress against such mistreatment led to Senate hearings in 1919, which contributed to a revision of the Articles of War in 1920, although the liberal reforms proposed by Samuel T. Ansell, acting judge advocate general while Crowder had been provost marshal general in charge of the draft, were rejected after a heated public debate.
Similar complaints of the harshness of military discipline during and after World War II led Congress to adopt the Elston Act of 1948, modifying the code of conduct for the army and the newly independent air force. In 1950, as part of the movement toward unification as well as modernization of the postwar armed forces, Congress made the name Articles of War obsolete when it adopted the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
During the period 1775–1950 in which the army and navy Articles of War were in effect, they were supplemented by a number of various publications. General Orders issued by the commanding general of the army or his subordinates, particularly during the Civil War, set maximum punishments, established court‐martial procedures, and formally supplemented the Articles of War. The general regulations for the navy and Marine Corps, first published in 1841, contained provisions relating to courts‐martial. The army published its first Manual for Courts‐Martial in 1917, an amended version in 1921, and another in 1928; the last remained in effect through World War II. The navy's counterpart to the army's Manual was Naval Courts and Boards, the 1937 edition of which was used throughout World War II. These manuals provided details for the implementation in all services of the military laws designed to maintain discipline and secure justice in the armed forces.
Bibliography
- William Winthrop, Military Law and Precedents, 1886;
2nd ed. , 1920. - Robert Pasley and Felix E. Larkin, The Navy Court‐Martial: Proposals for Its Reform,
Cornell Law Quarterly ,33 (1947), pp. 195–234. - Frederick B. Weiner, Courts‐Martial and the Bill of Rights: The Original Practice,
Harvard Law Review ,72 (1958–59), pp. 1–304. - Frederick B. Weiner, American Military Law in the Light of the First Mutiny Act's Tricentennial,
Military Law Review ,126 (1989), pp. 1–88. - John M. Lindley, A Soldier Is Also a Citizen: The Controversy over Military Justice in the U.S. Army, 1917–1920, 1990.
- Jonathan Lurie, Arming Military Justice: The Origins of the United States Court of Appeals, 1775–1950, 1992.
- Jonathan Lurie, Pursuing Military Justice: The History of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, 1951–1980, 1998
