United States v. Newcomb

I agree with Judge Perry, but as he does not meet the issues tendered in Chief Judge Fletcher’s dissent, I am constrained to do so because they are important to military practice.

Chief Judge Fletcher’s pronouncement that the President’s rule-making authority is confined “to matters of trial procedure” and that he has no power in regard to the “procedural steps necessary to bring a case to trial” is contrary to 200 years of American military practice. It not only wipes out the rules prescribed by the President in the Manual for Courts-Martial, United States, 1969 (Revised edition), for…