2023 Issue 1

The following members of our Regiment, in alphabetical order, passed away in 2022.

Since its inception in 1971, The Army Lawyer (TAL) has served as a premiere messaging platform for the Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG Corps), providing practical how-to articles alongside items of interest to the field. That has not changed. How TAL accomplishes its role, however, does change.

We dedicate this article to our beloved friend, colleague, and fellow Soldier, Chief Warrant Officer 3 (CW3) Melanie Sellars, who left this life much too soon, near the time this issue was going to print. A full memorial will be published in a future issue, but we would be remiss if we did not honor CW3 Sellars’s leadership and service as a key member of our Leadership Center team.

On 5 August 2023, the Environmental Law Division (ELD) commemorated its thirty-fifth anniversary as part of the U.S. Army Legal Services Agency. For more than three decades, ELD has advised Army leadership on environmental matters, litigated both defensive and affirmative environmental cases, and provided guidance to the field of environmental practitioners.

LTG (R) Flora D. Darpino engaged in mentorship with the 71st Graduate Course in a Q&A session with COL Robert J. Abbott, Director of the Leadership Center.

This article aims to serve as a guide to first-time individual deployers, particularly those who are relatively new to the Army and might not know what to expect. The observations in this article are drawn from several recent individual deployers.

Minus their higher rank and greater experience, my two mentors were mirror images of myself. We all went to the U.S. Military Academy, sharing the same commissioning source. All of us were Funded Legal Education Program officers. We were (and still are) married; each has two to three kids. We are active in our faiths. And yes, all of us are white males—so much for leveraging the proven power of diversity.

Mr. Fred Borch has done it again. More than twenty-five years in the making, Judge Advocates in the Great War: 1917–19221 masterfully shepherds readers through the history and evolution of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps during its critical development more than a century ago.

Why does the Army have a Judge Advocate General’s Corps today? Or, to phrase the question another way: Why did Congress abolish The Judge Advocate General’s Department (JAGD)—which had existed since 5 July 18841—to create a “Corps” of uniformed lawyers on 1 February 1949?