Product Review

A timely, provocative account of how military justice has shaped American society since the nation’s beginnings.

With a great eye for narrative, historian Chris Bray (himself a former soldier) tells the sweeping story of military justice from the institution of the court martial in the earliest days of the Republic to contemporary arguments over how to use military courts to try foreign terrorists or soldiers accused of sexual assault. Bray recounts the stories of famous American court martials, including those involving President Andrew Jackson, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, Lt. Jackie Robinson, and Pvt. Eddie Slovik; he explores how encounters of freed slaves with the military justice system during the Civil War anticipated the Civil Rights movement; and he explains how the Uniform Code of Military Justice came about after World War II. Throughout, he shows that the separate justice system of the armed forces has often served as a proxy for America’s ongoing arguments over equality, privacy, discrimination, security, and liberty.