Student Note Unequal Justice: Why Congress Should Expand the Supreme Court’s Jurisdiction to Review the Courts-martial System

STUDENT NOTE

Unequal Justice: Why Congress Should Expand the

Supreme Court’s Jurisdiction to Review the Courts-

Martial System

Kyle Yoerg*

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 795

I. HISTORY OF THE MILITARY JUSTICE SYSTEM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 797

A. Early History and the British System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 797

B. The American System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 798

II. SCOTUS JURISDICTION AND ITS GAPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801

A. Gaps in Direct Review. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801

1. The Statutory Gap. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 802

2. The Stevenson Gap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 803

B. Jurisdiction Compared with Other Courts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 805

C. Collateral review. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 806

III. THE EQUAL JUSTICE FOR OUR MILITARY ACT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 807

A. Effectiveness of the Current System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 807

B. The New System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 808

1. The Supreme Court’s Capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 808

2. Effect on Military Readiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 809

CONCLUSION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 811

INTRODUCTION

In 2018, the Supreme Court held that it has appellate jurisdiction to review

decisions of the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF) under 28 U.S.C.

§1259.

1

However, CAAF is the f‌inal court atop the “courts-martial system”

2

and

§1259 limits Supreme Court review of courts-martial cases to those where CAAF

has already reviewed or granted some relief.

3

In f‌iscal year 2020, CAAF granted

* Captain, Infantry, United States Army. The author is a J.D. candidate in the class of 2021 at

Georgetown University Law Center and will be assigned to the Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

He served as a student Senior Symposium Editor on the JOURNAL OF NATIONAL SECURITY LAW &

POLICY from 2020-21. The author wishes to thank Professor Mary DeRosa for her support of this article.

This article represents the opinions of the author alone and does not represent the opinions or policies of

the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government. © 2021, Kyle Yoerg.

1. Ortiz v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2165, 2170 (2018).

2. Id.

3. See 28 U.S.C. § 1259.

795

review in just 10.9% of cases where it received a petition.

4

Moreover, the U.S.

government has taken the position that Supreme Court review is conf‌ined to the

specif‌ic issue CAAF decided instead of the entire case.

5

Thus, the Supreme Court

can only hear a fraction of the issues present in the 10.9% of cases the Supreme

Court is permitted to hear.

This article argues that service members should have a right to appeal to the

Supreme Court even if CAAF denies a petition for review. The following three

reasons underlie this argument. First, service members currently have inferior

access to the Supreme Court than do civilians in other jurisdictions in the United

States. Criminal defendants in federal court have a right to appeal to the Supreme

Court,

6

and defendants in state courts can appeal their constitutional or federal

question to the nation’s highest court when a state court of last resort denies

review.

7

Even suspected enemy combatants detained at Guantanamo and tried in

military commissions have a statutory right to appeal to the Supreme Court.

8

Second, CAAF traditionally reviews cases where the Supreme Court is unlikely

to grant certiorari. CAAF overwhelmingly focuses on correcting errors in individ-

ual cases instead of deciding novel questions of law.

9

Since the Supreme Court is

unlikely to review an error correction case, this forecloses Supreme Court review

for many of the cases that CAAF does grant. Finally, enhanced Supreme Court

review will not adversely affect military readiness. An accused in a court-martial

today has “virtually the same” procedural protections afforded to an accused in a

civilian court,

10

and an all-civilian Supreme Court reviewing a case will not prej-

udice good order and discipline any more than CAAF review, a court also com-

posed of all civilians.

11

This article will proceed as follows. Part I will address the relevant history of

the military justice system and the current appellate review process for a court-

martial conviction. Part II will address the limitations on a service member’s abil-

ity to petition the Supreme Court. This section will also compare a court-martial

defendant’s access to the Supreme Court with other criminal defendants in the

4. Report of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces: Oct. 1, 2019 to Sept. 30, 2020,

at 7-8 (2020), https://perma.cc/Y8AT-M67M. CAAF granted 41 petitions for review and denied 336.

5. See Brief for the United States in Opposition at 8, Stevenson v. United States, 555 U.S. 816 (2008)

(No. 07-1397), 2008 WL 3199722, at *8; Eugene R. Fidell & Stephen I. Vladeck, Second Class Justice

in the Military, NY TIMES, Mar. 20, 2019, https://perma.cc/M7X6-NF5V.

6. 28 U.S.C. § 1254.

7. See 28 U.S.C. § 1257; see also Eugene Fidell, Brenner Fissell & Philip Cave, Equal Supreme

Court Access for Military Personnel: An Overdue Reform, 131 Yale L.J. Forum __, 9-10 (forthcoming

2021) (discussing state and territory criminal defendant access to the Supreme Court).

8. See 10 U.S.C. § 950g(e); JENNIFER K. ELSEA, CONG. RSCH. SERV., R41163, THE MILITARY

COMMISSIONS ACT OF 2009: OVERVIEW AND LEGAL ISSUES 53-54 (2013) (comparing general courts-

martial and the Military Commissions Act of 2009), https://perma.cc/52ZM-YQWZ; Fidell & Vladeck,

supra note 5.

9. Rodrigo M. Caruc¸o, In Order to Form A More Perfect Court: A Quantitative Measure of the

Military’s Highest Court’s Success As A Court of Last Resort, 41 VT. L. REV. 71, 75 (2016); see also

Fidell &Vladeck, supra note 5.

10. Ortiz, 138 S. Ct. at 2174.

11. See 10 U.S.C. § 942.

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