I’ve written an argument preview for every case heard at CAAF so far this term. My goal was to preview the entire term. However, I am a trial defense counsel, and my caseload is taking more of my time. Because of this, I don’t have previews for the four arguments occurring on April 2-3, and I likely also won’t have previews for the two arguments scheduled for April 15. It’s too early to make any predictions about the May arguments.

I will continue to create case pages (relocated to the top navigation bar) and provide the details of upcoming arguments in TWIMJ (published Sundays at 1 p.m.), as both of these tasks are relatively easy (for example, I usually prepare TWIMJ while drinking coffee on Saturday morning).

ABA Journal has a collection of its 10 Best Apps for Lawyers, here.  I have to say that dLaw (or Droid Law) makes the Top 10 but doesn’t get my vote.  I added the CAAFlog Post RSS feed to the app and now everytime I launch the feeds link it crashes.  Plus, I can’t find a place where you can edit or remove feeds (although that may be operator error).

Jim Russell unexpectedly passed away over the weekend.  In addition to being a true military justice legend in his own time, Jim was a wonderful man.  I’m stunned by the loss and will miss him greatly.

Just wanted to point out some resources for Navy and Marine Corps types that I can best sum up as resources with unfulfilled potential. 

Here is a link to the Navy Judge Advocate General Corps’ community blog. When you go to the blog you’ll see the last post was Friday with posts almost daily for many days before. As we here at www.caaflog.com could tell the upstart blogs in the Navy JAGC, a blog is most useful if it has 2 ingredients, (1) content on a regular basis and (2) an audience. And while it looks like the blog gets regular posts, unfortunately its target audience didn’t even know it existed–or at least the Navy JAG Corps members of this blog didn’t know it existed. And, unfortunately, as OFL also found, another feature of the Navy JAG Corps’ blog makes it lacking in the audience development area, it is inaccessible on his af.mil domain computer!!  When he clicked on the link his computer told him the Navy JAG Corps’ blog was:

ACCESS DENIED Internet Usage is Logged & Monitored Why is this site blocked? The site you are trying to reach has been Blacklisted and deemed an unacceptable risk to Air Force Networks.

I knew competition for top new JAs was tough, but blacklisting the other services’ official blog, that’s low.

In other Navy Judge Advocate news, here is a link to a feature I hadn’t known about, JAGTV. It has vignettes from new and old JAs from the Navy and Marine Corps. Seems like a good recruiting tool, though I wonder how the stars of JAGTV fair among their peers with the off beat sense of humor that CAAF has noted among JAs? Also, I would say that to make it a little more user friendly the JAG Corps ought to migrate some of the Navy JAG Corps’ blog description of each vignette to the JAGTV site.

With this year’s version of the Top 10 completed on New Year’s Day, we launch into 2013.  I will miss the rancor and debate about the Top 10 from previous years because either I was the most beneficent Top 10 czar in the history of czars and the Top 10 list was perfect or, and this is the more likely reason of these two, our now nearly 2-year-old comment policy (here and here) has driven away all the rancorous and debating types [ed. note, I don't mean to suggest that is a good thing.  There are pluses and minuses to the current policy].  What we will probably have is some continuing debate about our comments’ policy now that it will start the terrible twos . . . or maybe not.  Either way, welcome to 2013, lucky #7 for this little blog that could. 

For those that missed it, here is a pdf of the entire Top 10. Thanks to OFL and Gene for putting it together.

As you can tell, there are some design changes to NIMJBlog-CAAFlog this new year. We hope these modifications make this site more useful and intuitive. Please share any feedback (particularly any negative reviews or feature requests). I tested the site on Firefox and IE9, so if you use a different browser then I’m particularly interested in hearing about anything that doesn’t look right to you.

There are also a number of unseen changes from some cleanup of our design code. But, I’m a terrible programmer. So, if you find something on the site that’s broken, please bring it to my attention.

I plan to develop a mobile version of this site sometime in the coming months. Once I figure out how to write HTML for mobile devices… If you know how to do this, and want to help, please let me know.

“This one goes to 11.”

The No Man offers us this.

I’ve indexed our posts from the September 2011 Term so that you can see case pages using the Merits Cases dropdown box to the right. I’m not planning on indexing prior terms.

You might have noticed the dropdown list of CAAF’s merits cases for the current term.

Selecting a case from the list will take you to a page listing all of our posts about that case, sorted in reverse chronological order.

I’m updating the list as cases are scheduled for oral argument. I plan to go back and index last term’s cases as well.

Today’s separate posts linking to the oral arguments in the first five cases of the term isn’t a ploy to increase our post count: it’s a new technique to enable us to provide you with an oral argument audio podcast.

The podcast is an experiment, and your feedback is appreciated. We’re also going to watch access stats, so you can vote by subscribing.

Some caveats:

-The audio files are hosted on the court’s website. The podcast will (at least for now) link to the court’s site, and not to a mirror of the content.

-The podcast might not be compatible with iTunes. Best I can tell, this is a common problem that is caused by a March 2012 iTunes policy change to server configuration requirements (requiring byte-range requests). I spent a few hours troubleshooting before I gave up, thoroughly reminded of why I don’t like Apple products (though they are pretty). If anyone successfully accesses the podcast through iTunes, please let me know.

-The podcast will, eventually, link to arguments at the CCAs, and other notable cases.

Happy birthday to us.  CAAFlog turns 6 years old today.  Another ten years and we’ll be able to drive!

We started with this post about United States v. Lane, 64 M.J. 1 (C.A.A.F. 2006), and the issue of retroactivity of CAAF decisions.

Today I’ll remember Code 45 alumna Mari-Rae Sopper, who was murdered in the attack on the Pentagon, and other victims of the 9-11 attacks.

On Sunday I learned about two great opportunities for lawyers with a desire to help servicemembers. 

First, here is a link to the ABA’s Operation Stand By.  Operation Stand-By is a place for attorneys to help judge advocates:

Attorneys can register to join Operation Stand-By to volunteer time to receive calls or emails from military attorneys in need of attorney-to-attorney advice on state-specific legal information relating to your legal area of expertise, so they can further assist their servicemember clients.

Second, here is a link to the ABA’s Military Pro Bono Project.  The Pro Bono Project tells attorneys how they can help military families:

Attorneys can register to be contacted by the ABA Military Pro Bono Project with opportunities to provide pro bono assistance on behalf of military families when cases arise in your geographic and substantive area. Sign up for our weekly Case Opportunities listserv to stay up-to-date on the latest pro bono opportunities through the Project.

Both sound like great opportunities and Operation Stand By sounds like a great resource for judge advocates.  Thanks to Mary Meixner, the Project Director, for bringing it to our attention.

Over the past few weeks, Lieutenant Colonel Chris Kennebeck, U.S. Army, was kind enough to contribute to CAAFlog, providing us with an in-depth look at the work and world of The Joint Service Committee on Military Justice (JSC). He has our deepest thanks for this project.

In his first post, LTC Kennebeck described the composition and role of the JSC, and the interplay between the Manual for Courts-Martial and the Executive Orders it describes. In his second post, he explained how the rules, analysis, and discussion in the Manual are proposed, evaluated, and promulgated. In his final post, he discussed the legislative process that is responsible for our UCMJ.

If you haven’t read these posts yet, you should. They are a fantastic resource, and LTC Kennebeck’s participation in our discussions here has elevated the discourse and made us all smarter.

Thanks again Sir.