tal 2019 issue 3 | The Army Lawyer | Periodicals (2024)

There’s a lot of buzz about the Assignment Interactive Module 2.0 (AIM2) among officers throughout the Army. You may have heard the term thrown around by your S1, your fellow brothers- and sisters-in-arms from other branches, your commander, or even your staff judge advocate. Your curiosity may have brought you to the AIM2 website, https://aim.hrc.army.mil/portal/officer/portal.aspx. If you haven’t visited yet, please take the time to do so.

I stayed because I realized that leadership . . . is about his heart and his commitment to his fellow man. It’s about developing the hand that you are dealt. It’s about giving back to society a better citizen than society gave to you when that soldier enlisted in the military. It doesn’t matter if a soldier stays for three years or thirty. If he leaves the military feeling a little bit better about his fellow man; if he begins to question some of the prejudices that he grew up with; if he feels moved when he hears the national anthem being played and stands a little straighter, then staying in the military is worth all of the pain and sweat and hardship.

When Colonel Fansu Ku—a military judge in the Second Judicial Circuit—first joined the Army, she thought she would only serve for her three-year minimum obligation. Being the only member of her family to join the military, she had no idea what to expect when commissioning into the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. Her initial impression of the Army was not what she had anticipated. She still remembers the discomfort she felt on the first day of her Officer Basic Course (OBC): having to be weighed in an assembly-like fashion and her weight being announced by the cadre for all to hear. She was already asking herself, “What have I done?” Her uncertainty about the Army lasted throughout OBC because it took her all twelve weeks of the course to pass the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT).

1. Please join us in congratulating nineteen-year old Private First Class (PFC) Tony Ladebu, a paralegal specialist with the U.S. Army Cadet Command, on winning the 2019 Soldier of the Year for Cadet Command at Fort Knox, Kentucky. The five-day competition covered twenty events designed to measure excellence in warrior tasks and skills. Private First Class Ladebu, who arrived at Fort Knox fresh out of basic and advanced individual training, received a pistol, Trojan helmet, and other prizes for his efforts. Outstanding job, PFC Ladebu.

Today, there are some 3,500 men and women in our Corps who have the Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) 27D, Paralegal Specialist. Roughly 1,400 are on active duty, about 1,100 are in the Army Reserve, and about as many are in the Army National Guard. The Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAGC) relies on these paralegals to support the delivery of legal services throughout the Army. Although there have been uniformed lawyers in the Army since 1775, enlisted personnel were not authorized in the Judge Advocate General’s Department (JAGD)—as the Corps was then called—until 1918. This means that paralegals, and their forerunners, have been an integral part of Army law for 100 years.

“The buck stops here.” That phrase, popularized by President Harry Truman, tells us that responsibility ultimately rests with the person in charge. This concept has long been embraced in international law.¹ So too has it been adopted by the military. Army Regulation (AR) 600-20, para. 2-1 says “Commanders are responsible for everything their command does or fails to do.”²

You will hear a lot of folks say, yes, education is important—it is important. (Laughter.) But it requires not just words but deeds. And the fact is, that since most of you were born, tuition, and fees at America’s colleges have more than doubled. And that forces students like you to take out a lot more loans. There are fewer grants. You rack up more debt. Can I get an “amen”?¹

In the midst of a leadership turnover in Congress and a partial government shutdown, the 116th Congress of the United States of America quietly passed the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019.¹ Nine days later, Congress enacted the Further Additional Continuing Appropriations Act of 2019.² Both of these Acts amended the Anti-Deficiency Act, specifically 31 United States Code (U.S.C.) § 1341,³ adding a new subsection and more than 200 new words.⁴ The amendments more than doubled the text of 31 U.S.C. § 1341.⁵ On its face, such voluminous changes to a statute appears drastic.6 However, in this case, the considerable amount of text added to 31 U.S.C. § 1341 is generally inconsequential for the practicing fiscal law attorney.

The Judgment Fund was established by Congress in 1956 to alleviate the need for specific legislation following every successful claim against the United States.¹ The purpose behind the Judgment Fund was to eliminate the procedural burdens involved in getting an individual appropriation from Congress, allowing for the prompt payment of judgments and reducing the amount of interest accrued between the time the judgment was awarded and payment was made.²