It’s pretty clear that the military cannot be trusted to handle it’s own legal issues. There are far too many factors that make that it impossible.
We suggest the establishment of the “Department of Military Justice” (DOMJ), which would fall directly under the United States Attorney General, the Department of Justice, and have no affiliation with the Department of Defense. Complete autonomy must be maintained. It should be staffed by civilian attorneys with no military chain-of-command connections.
Administrative cases would continue to be handled by the respective services, but any legal case for the DOMJ would immediately be severed from military command and control. Systems could be set up to ensure fairness, and speedy handling of cases.
The UCMJ needs to be scraped, and a new code developed that is more reflective of current societal norms. Adultery or sodomy should be criminal offenses. Furthermore, it needs to align legal rights, more along the lines of the civilian justice system, as outlined above. Finally, the new code would establish processes and procedures for handling cases under the new DOMJ.
This is not a situation of “don’t fix what isn’t broken,” because it is. It may not be “broken” from the government’s point of view, but it’s certainly broken from a law scholar’s point of view.
Congressional and Presidential action is necessary if we really embrace the concept of equal justice under law. Right now, they are happy with things they way they are, the status quo is just fine with them, thank you very much. But, we all know it’s wrong to send innocent people to prison, or to cruelly over-sentence military members to long prison sentences.