Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced that he has directed the Pentagon to review the department’s military legal system.
“Our commanders and our warriors need and deserve a world-class military legal system that sharpens their combat effectiveness,” Hegseth said in a video. “We must deliver reliable advice, better investigations, fair military justice, and better support across the board so that commanders can lead decisively and our warriors can fight with confidence.”
He said that he will be signing a memo establishing a special review panel to conduct an “ongoing, long-term, department-wide review of all aspects of the military legal system as it affects our warriors.” Every service program will be evaluated and compared across the services, and will be benchmarked against the Department of Justice, and the best state criminal justice systems.
The review will conclude with “concrete recommendations to cut bureaucracy, strengthen training and culture, and make our legal professionals far more effective.”
Hegseth’s action is the latest review undergone within the Department of War. In March, Hegseth launched a 90-day review of the nation’s senior military educational institutions and called a new task force to identify and eliminate courses he said have no place.
Hegseth cited specific examples of course content he called incompatible with military readiness: seminars on “genocide through the analytic of gender,” classes on “whiteness studies,” a course featuring a professor who described Hamas attacks as “astounding” and “incredible,” and graduate studies focused on abolishing law enforcement. The mandate includes reviewing professors, administrators, and curriculum to ensure all content centers on national security, strategy, history, and what Hegseth called “overall excellence.”
