How does a military attorney support reforms in military justice?

Military justice just went through its largest structural change in more than seventy years, and military attorneys are the ones making it run. The reform moved the power to prosecute the most serious offenses out of the chain of command and into the hands of independent military prosecutors. Supporting that reform is not an abstract policy exercise; it is the day-to-day work of standing up, staffing, and operating an entirely new prosecutorial system.

The reform: the Office of Special Trial Counsel

Congress directed the creation of the Office of Special Trial Counsel (OSTC) in the FY22 National Defense Authorization Act, and its authority took effect on December 28, 2023. Each service, the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Space Force, stood up and staffed an OSTC to take over prosecutorial decisions for a defined set of serious crimes.

The change is widely described as the most significant transformation of the military justice system since the UCMJ was established in 1950, and the reason is where decision-making now sits.

What actually changed

The core of the reform is independence:

  • Covered offenses. Special trial counsel hold authority over a list of serious crimes, including murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, domestic violence, stalking, child pornography offenses, and most sexual assault offenses. Substantiated sexual harassment was added as a covered offense effective January 1, 2025.
  • Independent authority. A special trial counsel has exclusive authority to decide whether a reported offense is a covered offense, to make the binding decision to refer charges to a general or special court-martial, to enter plea agreements, and to withdraw or dismiss charges.
  • Outside the chain of command. These prosecutorial decisions are binding and fully independent of the military chains of command of both the victim and the accused, the central structural shift away from the traditional commander-driven model.

The practitioner’s role in making it work

This is where military attorneys “support reform” in the literal sense. Judge advocates staff the new offices as special trial counsel, build the procedures the statute requires, train the broader force on the new division of authority, and work through the practical questions a brand-new system raises, such as how the OSTC’s authority interacts with longstanding rules against unlawful command influence.

Consider a sexual-assault allegation arising today: under the reform effective at the end of 2023, the decision whether to prosecute now rests with an independent special trial counsel rather than the commander.

The honest framing is that a reform of this scale is not finished when the law passes; it is finished when practitioners have made it operational. The attorneys carrying covered-offense cases under the new structure are, in effect, turning a statutory change into a working institution, which is the least visible and most decisive form of support a reform can get.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the Office of Special Trial Counsel change who investigates crimes?
It shifts certain prosecutorial decisions to independent special trial counsel. Investigative roles, such as military criminal investigators, continue and feed cases into the new structure.

Do commanders still have any role in covered-offense cases?
For covered offenses, the key charging decisions move to special trial counsel, though commanders retain various responsibilities outside that prosecutorial authority.

Does the reform apply across all the services?
Yes. Each service established its own Office of Special Trial Counsel, so the change applies across the services for the defined covered offenses.

This article is general information about recent military justice reforms. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. The reforms described are evolving and their implementation can change. This article describes the framework in general terms only.

Sources

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