One wonders how much energy the various government departments every day keeping up with all of the ridiculous mandates like this one that clutter up the law. It’s a wonder anything useful ever gets done. Or, to put it another way, is anything that gets done useful?

If No Man’s post correctly states DoD’s definition of the concept of “in the field,” it is not historically justified. Other than a couple of (wrongly decided and subsequently discredited) lower court cases, the term “in the field” has generally required not only acts with a view toward an enemy, but also a remoteness from available civil authority.

Interestingly, in the court-martial jurisdiction cases of the 1950s and 1960s, the United States took the opposite position from that referenced by No Man above, arguing that the constitutional concept of “in the field” just required remoteness from American civil authority, and that operations with a view toward an enemy were not constitutionally required for court-martial jurisdiction. This, the United States argued, permitted the court-martial of civilian dependents and government employees stationed overseas in time of peace. That reinterpretation of the historical materials did not fare well.

The fairer historical reading is that “in the field,” for purposes of court-martial jurisdiction, requires not only operations with a view toward an enemy, but also the absence of reasonably available, functioning civilian courts.