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From August 1994 until February 1995 I served as an Australian Defence Force legal officer with the Australian Medical Support Force which was a component of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda. During this deployment three duties I engaged with still stand out for me 25 years later: investigating the mass grave site at Ntarama, the use of force to defend the mandate and individual self-defence, and detention. This paper, in large part, engages with my reflections of these issues in the context of my military law practice, and academic research and writing. I conclude by making six observations from my experiences in Rwanda.

This paper will discuss classified litigation procedures in United States Military Courts-Martial, governed by Military Rule of Evidence 505 and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The differences between United States Federal Court procedures and United States Military Commissions, governed by the Classified Information Privilege Act (cipa) and Military Commissions Rule of Evidence 505, are also discussed. Finally, best practices and selected military cases regarding espionage are presented.

The global trend towards civilianization of military justice systems has had its own unique impact on Singapore’s brand of military justice, in particular its mode of trial by General Court-Martial. This paper explores the development of Singapore’s military justice system since Singapore’s independence, comparing it to developments in the United Kingdom and Canada, two countries that have also civilianized their military justice systems with input from their civil courts, and in the case of the uk, the European Court of Human Rights. These jurisdictions provide a useful comparison on the progress of Singapore’s civilianization reform given both their shared origin of military justice in the English court-martial system and the focus of all three jurisdictions on better protecting the rights of accused servicemen.

The Australian Defence Force (adf) has had a number of inquiries or reviews into its military justice system in the past two decades. The recommendations of those inquiries have led to an increasing ‘civilianisation’ of the military discipline system. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the specific requirement of section 70 of the Defence Force Discipline Act (dfda) which requires sentencing authorities to explicitly consider ‘civilian’ sentencing principles. Given that the vast majority of adf personnel plead guilty during summary hearings, it is the sentencing process that is the most critical exercise of legal principles in the summary jurisdiction. The requirement to explicitly consider civilian sentencing principles, where such principles are not defined in the dfda, and are hotly contested amongst highly educated and experienced civilian lawyers, is impractical, inappropriate and does not serve what should be the fundamental purpose of the dfda: the maintenance of service discipline. This paper will discuss the difficulties of the current ‘civilianisation’ of the sentencing process and will propose potential guidelines for legislative reform of section 70 of the dfda, particularly in relation to summary authority hearings.