The Progress of Jurisdiction of British Military Law in the late 1990s and the future development

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To confirm the purpose of this project, the long-standing British Court Martial has been shaken by the judgment of the Court of European Human Rights in the Findly case (1997) etc. To cope with the judgments reforms of the whole military justice system included Court Martial were made. The judgment of House of Lards in the Spear case (2002) and the judgment of the Court of European Human Rights in the Cooper case (2003) acknowledged the reformation. Thus the judicial appreciation was confirmed and the enactment of Armed Forces Act 2006 was the closing. The main purpose of this project was to extract the essence of the military justice system which was built in the reformation from the point of Jurisdiction and "the theory of civil law".But the half of the purpose is not achieved. The main reason is the shaking of the military justice sys-tem by another things which were happened in the late 2004. They were cases in which Iraqis were ill-treated by British soldiers who were members of British Armed Forces which occupied Iraq. At peace time the reformed Court Martials perform their role smoothly, but in Iraq for which occupation British Government did not make enough preparation British Armed Forces could not cope with the chaos and Armed Forces themselves were thrown into confusion and the discipline was not able to be maintained. It was very difficult to collect evidences or witnesses for proceeding to punish the criminals. Therefore at criminal courts and Court Martial almost defendants were ac-quitted and the inquiries of those abuse cases are continuing.During this project, I have been collecting information of these cases. The analysis and examination of those may be done at the next project.