Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the creation of a special review board to examine the military legal system after disbanding a congressionally mandated oversight panel with a similar directive last year.
“This panel will conduct an ongoing, long-term, department-wide review of all aspects of the military legal system as it affects our warriors,” Hegseth said in a video announcing the new panel. “They’re going to go deep, evaluating every service program, comparing them across the services, benchmarking against the Department of Justice and the best state criminal justice systems.”
Hegseth announced the initiative in a May 8 memorandum that has not yet been made public. He didn’t offer specifics about the panel in the brief announcement video, saying only that its aim is to cut down on bureaucracy, “enhance trust, strengthen our force, drive real reform, and help ensure our warfighters receive the world-class military legal system they deserve.”
The military legal system previously had an oversight mechanism: the Military Justice Review Panel, a 13-member independent panel of experts that reported to Congress. That panel was put into place in April 2022 and delivered a 238-page review of the Uniform Code of Military Justice at the end of 2024.
Hegseth disbanded the Military Justice Review Panel last year, and it’s unclear what became of its recommendations.
The Pentagon’s new review system will be overseen by Defense Department General Counsel Earl Matthews. It’s unclear who else will make up the review panel or who will decide on its composition.
But the new panel will report to Hegseth, Defense One reported after reviewing a copy of the May 8 memo.
“It will deliver interim reports and recommendations on specific issues as they are completed, with periodic updates to me,” Defense One reported. “These reports will drive immediate reforms to cut unnecessary bureaucracy, strengthen training and organization, refine culture, and professionalize military justice implementation and command advice.”
There are aspects of the UCMJ and judicial structure that deserve scrutiny and reform, argued Ira Rushing, an associate at Tully Rinckey PLLC and a Judge Advocate General in the Mississippi National Guard in an interview with Military Times.
“There’s plenty of room to improve the system discharge upgrade timelines right now,” Rushing said. “The different branches, discharge review boards are taking a year. The boards for corrections of military records are taking close to two years to just get through backlogs. There’s the defense counsel resourcing issues,” among other priorities.
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But Hegseth’s public statements about the panel — and previous comments about rules of engagement — lead some experts to believe his focus is to minimize legal deliberations about actions on the battlefield.
“We must deliver reliable advice, better investigations, fair military justice, and better support across the board so that commanders can lead decisively,” Hegseth said in his May 11 video address.
Steven Lepper, a retired Air Force major general and JAG, said he thinks Hegseth believes “that the law shouldn’t continue to provide guardrails around military operations.”
“[Hegseth] has offered no evidence that that law, or that the lawyers are getting in the way of rapid battlefield decisions,” Lepper said. “What judge advocates are responsible for doing for commanders is ensuring that military operations and the decisions that commanders make in the context of those operations are all within the law.”
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The new panel could have influence over legislative changes the Pentagon and the administration propose to Congress, said Eugene Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School.
“The Pentagon is in a position to very, very substantially impact what the law is,” Fidell said.
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