Royal Army College

LAW 301 · Service Law and Military Justice · Level 300 (Junior leader / NCO and specialist)

A Royal Army College course in the law that governs the Service.

Course length: 10 hours, studied online and asynchronously at the student's own pace, together with any in-person practical instruction and assessment the course requires.

Foreword

An army is a body of people lawfully entrusted with force, and a body so entrusted must be governed by law of its own. The ordinary law of the State binds every soldier as it binds every national, and never stops binding them; but the life of the Service makes demands the ordinary law does not reach, the duty to obey a lawful order, to keep a post, to hold a standard when no one compels it, and these are upheld by a law of the Service itself. That law is not the enemy of fairness but its instrument: it exists so that discipline is kept justly, by known rules fairly applied, and never by the whim of the powerful or the temper of the moment.

This course teaches that law as it stands for the Royal Kaharagian Army: the Code of Service Discipline, the offences it names, the powers it grants, the process by which a charge is heard, the punishments that may follow, the safeguards that protect the accused, and the firm boundary at which service discipline gives way to the civil justice of the State. It is written for the soldier who will one day hold authority over others, the junior leader, the non-commissioned officer, and the specialist, because to hold authority justly a leader must understand the law in whose name they act.

A word of plain honesty runs through the whole course. The Code of Service Discipline of the Principality is, at the time of writing, a draft framework, made for the approval of the proper authority and not yet in force. This course teaches its shape and its principles so that the Service is ready for it, and so that the discipline kept today is kept in its spirit; where the course speaks of what the Code provides, it speaks of what the Code is to provide once enacted.

Who this course is for

Members on the leadership and command pathways, non-commissioned officers and those preparing to become them, and members of the Service Law and Military Justice speciality. It assumes no legal training and builds from the ground up, but it assumes the discipline and customs of the Service taught in RMT 120, and it sits beside the leadership courses (LDR 301, LDR 310) and the law-of-armed-conflict course (PME 201), with which it shares its boundary at serious crime and the grave breach.

What you will be able to do

By the end you will be able to:

explain why the Service has a law of its own, and how it stands beside the ordinary law of the State;
describe the Code of Service Discipline, who is subject to it, and the conduct it governs;
recognise the main kinds of service offence and tell discipline from punishment;
set out the powers of arrest, custody, and investigation, and the rights they carry;
describe the summary process and the service tribunal, and the rights of the accused in each;
state the scale of punishments, the limits on them, and the bar on degrading punishment;
explain review and appeal, and the safeguards against injustice; and
mark the boundary at which serious crime and the grave breach pass to the civil justice of the State.

How the course works

The course is self-paced and studied online, lesson by lesson, with a worked example and a reflection in each. Service law is kept in the unit not by recollection of clauses but by leaders who understand its purpose and apply it justly, so the course teaches the reasons behind the rules as much as the rules themselves. It draws throughout on the Sovereign's Regulations and Orders (Volume 2, the Code of Service Discipline) and the College's draft Code of Service Discipline framework, and it is applied in practice through the fair exercise of authority taught in the leadership courses.

Structure

Lesson	Title
01	Why the Service Has a Law of Its Own
02	The Code of Service Discipline
03	Service Offences
04	Authority, Arrest, and Investigation
05	Summary Proceedings
06	Service Tribunals and the Rights of the Accused
07	Punishments and Sanctions
08	Review, Appeal, and the Safeguards Against Injustice
09	Service Law and the Civil Justice of the State
10	Fairness, Command, and the Spirit of Service Discipline

A note on sources