Nelson & His World

I thought members might be interested to know about the post of Judge Advocate of the Fleet. The obituary of the last, and 29th holder of the post, which was founded in 1663 and abolished in 2008, is published in The Times today.

The post was held by a civilian judge who was responsible for the supervision of the Royal Navy's court-martial system, a duty that used to be shared with the Navy's Chief Naval Judge Advocate (CNJA), a legally trained serving naval officer.

According to the Times, 'After a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, which took the view that as a serving officer the CNJA was insufficiently independent, the post was abolished in 2004. As a result of the Armed Forces Act of 2006, the Judge Advocate of the Fleet was also formally abolished in 2008, the role being subsumed into the duties of the Judge Advocate General, an equally ancient civilian office dealing with the British Army and more recently RAF courts martial.

The Times report continues: 'These moves were seen by many naval die-hards as part of the overall 'human rights' campaign which over the years has hobbled the customary powers of far-flung autocratic warship captains to award 'summary' punishment, the much enlarged right to elect for court martial having multiplied bureaucracy.'

Incidentally, the subject of the obituary, Commander His Honour Judge John Sessions, had served in the Royal Navy and was called to the Bar while a serving officer.

Any comments?

Anna,

I somehow feel that this is more of a case of Europe appropriating more to itself, and I have a shrewd suspicion that they see this as another example of an ancient British relic that somehow shouldn't be allowed in the modern world. I actually take the opposite view as to the reason why they wish to abolish the position, the holder being as they put it, 'insufficiently independant.' I would have thought that as the holder of the post was a trained naval officer, he would have been in a far better position to assess many aspects of a case than a civilian, since there are circumstances to do with the sea that he would have understood the more readily as he may actually have experienced them himself.

Oh, well, back to watching re-runs of JAG, even if American!

I think it's one of the difficulties that foreigners have with some English institutions: they may sound illogical/antiquated/unfair/incomprehensible, but they actually work. If they stop working, they grind along for a bit and we moan and groan and make a cup of tea and try to ignore the creakiness then we finally get round to changing them - usually without much blood being shed. But many of the ancient posts and institutions are valuable, trustworthy and serve us well. There doesn't seem to be any hint of corruption, bias, inefficiency or unfairness demonstrated by holders of the above posts. (And if any holder ever did behave improperly, there is a remedy. He could be charged with 'abuse of a public office'.) Why insist that we abolish them? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Hear, hear! I couldn't agree more and if 'Europe' knew a bit more about these 'ancient' institutions, they might actually find that they are quite up to date and living in the real world. They have to modernise beneath the tradition , or they would cease to exist.

Another point connected with the Naval Judge Advocate being a naval officer, is that people always get a bit up-tight about what they see as some body or organisation, in this case the navy, 'investigating their own.' I don't necessarily see the harm in this, since a) a naval court is also a court of law; b) I would imagine that the organisation as a whole would want to investigate anything which might bring it into disrepute. Of course, there probably have been miscarriages of justice, but there have been in civilian courts as well.

Perhaps it might also be pertinent to ask why the system was begun in the first place, back in the reign of Charles ll. I would hazard a guess that it was because civilian judges couldn't understand all the naval jargon and were at a loss as to the naval world!