service law

The law that regulates the conduct of members of the armed forces. It consists of naval law, military law, and air-force law (military law is the branch relating to the army, but the expression is frequently used to describe all three branches). Its primary sources are the Naval Discipline Act 1957, the Army Act 1955, and the Air Force Act 1955; supplementary sources are Admiralty Instructions and the Queen’s Regulations both for the Army and for the Royal Air Force. The three Acts concerned require annual renewal. Every fifth year an Armed Forces Act enables them to continue in force for one year and provides that for each of the following four years they may be continued in force by an Order in Council that has been approved by resolution of each House of Parliament. The purpose of this procedure (which did not apply to the Naval Discipline Act 1957 until this was provided by the Armed Forces Act 1971) is to ensure that Parliament has an annual opportunity of debating matters relating to the armed forces.

Service law is a specialized code of criminal law. Its essential concern is the maintenance of discipline and it embodies a variety of offences (e.g. *desertion, malingering, and insubordination) that have no counterpart in the ordinary criminal law. Commanding officers have powers of dealing with minor offences summarily, but the tribunals primarily responsible for the trial and punishment of offences are the *courts martial. Service law applies to a member of the armed forces wherever he may be. In the UK he is subject both to service law and to the ordinary criminal law. When he is not in the UK, the ordinary criminal law does not in general apply to him; the relevant Acts therefore provide that it is an offence under service law for any serviceman to do anything that constitutes an offence under the ordinary criminal law. The effect of this general provision is to create, in the case of a member of the armed forces who is in the UK, a duality of offences. If, for example, a soldier in the UK steals, he commits an offence against both the ordinary criminal law and service law. He cannot, however, be punished under both.

Although service law applies primarily to members of the armed forces, certain classes of civilians are also subject to it. These include civilians employed outside the UK within the limits of the command of any officer commanding a body of the regular forces and the families of members of the armed forces residing with them outside the UK. The inclusion of the latter has had the effect of extending the jurisdiction of courts martial to cases with which they are manifestly not equipped to deal. This has led to the establishment of *standing civilian courts.