The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Library of Congress Military Legal Resources
A Valuable Source for Judge Advocates, Legal Administrators, and Paralegal Specialists
By Fred L. Borch III
Since 2002, The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School (TJAGLCS) librarian has worked with the Library of Congress (LOC) Federal Research Division (FRD) in creating a special website devoted to military legal resources. For many years, this was an ad hoc project. Last year, however, Brigadier General R. Patrick Huston signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) that established a more formal relationship with the LOC. The intent of the MOA is for the Regiment to provide historically important law-related documents, photographs, and printed materials to the LOC that are scanned, uploaded, and hosted permanently on the free and publicly-accessible LOC FRD website.
Today, and given this special relationship with the LOC, everyone in the Regiment should know about the wealth of military legal resources on the website. Located at https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/ Military_Law/military-legal-resources-home.html, the website is especially important because, as a public website, it is outside “the wire.” There is no need to “CAC-in” or go through any security protocols when accessing digitized materials. But, just as important, the website contains a tremendous amount of law-related materials in one place.
Interested in the older (now superseded) Manuals for Courts-Martial (MCMs)? You can find the 1890, 1901, 1905 MCMs, as well as every MCM published after the enactment of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) in 1950—from the first 1951 MCM to the 2019 MCM.
For those doing research on war crimes, a huge number of digitized records of trial and other related materials are available. The intent is for the LOC website, in concert with the library at TJAGLCS, to become the top war crimes research center in the United States, if not the world. Consequently, the website contains thousands and thousands of pages on the “My Lai Massacre,” including the official investigation conducted by Lieutenant General William Peers. Complete records of trial are also online, such as United States v. Valentin Bersin et al.,1 the prosecution of Waffen-SS soldiers accused of murdering eighty-four American prisoners of war at Malmedy, Belgium, in December 1944. The most recent addition to the LOC website is the complete 39-volume record of United States v. Tomoyuki Yamashita.2
What else is on the LOC’s Military Legal Resources webpage? Select Graduate Course theses; the legislative history of the UCMJ; law-related War Department and Department of the Army pamphlets, Field Manuals, Training Circulars; Judge Advocate General’s School scrapbooks from the University of Michigan 1942-1946; and the papers of Major General Thomas H. Green, the senior judge advocate in Hawaii after the declaration of martial law in the islands in December 1941.
In the coming years, more and more materials will continue to be added to the LOC, so members of the Regiment should know about it, and start to use it now. TAL
Mr. Borch is the Regimental Historian, Archivist, and Professor of Legal History and Leadership.
Notes
1. Malmedy Massacre Record of Trial: United States vs. Valentin Bersin et al., Libr. Congress, https://www.loc. gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/Malmedy_trial.html (last visited Sept. 12, 2019).
2. United States of America vs. Tomoyuki Yamashia. Record of Trial, Libr. Congress, https://www.loc.gov/ rr/frd/Military_Law/Yamashita_trial.html (last visited Sept. 12, 2019).