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Abstract: 

The debate about how to best deal with sexual assault in the military has been distilled to a single issue: Should the decisions related to prosecuting these crimes remain in the hands of the officers in the chain of command or should they shift automatically to an outside entity? Competing proposals for a Pentagon policy bill put these two positions at odds, with each side represented by Democratic Senators, both female: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) and Senator Claire McCaskill (MO). The article below, Part I of a two-part article, outlines the debates about the reforms, placing the most significant issues in historical context. The second part of the article, to appear in the next issue of SLR, will summarize the development of the governing Articles of Military Justice as the backdrop to the debated issues and offers support for removing chain-of-command oversight.

Keywords: Military Justice Improvement Act; Defense Reauthorization Act

Affiliations:  1: HBO.