Historical resource

The Army has a new and interesting addition to their Military Legal Resources.

Selected Papers of Edmund M. Morgan, Jr., Regarding the Drafting of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (1948-1949).

In the summer of 1948, in response to a need for a uniform military justice system in the newly reorganized and expanded post-World War II defense establishment, Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal appointed a committee to draft a uniform code of military justice (UCMJ). Secretary Forrestal selected Gordon Gray (Assistant Secretary of the Army), W.John Kenney (Under Secretary of the Navy), and Eugene M. Zuckert (Assistant Secretary of the Air Force) for the committee. He also selected Felix E. Larkin (Assistant General Counsel, Office of the Secretary of Defense) as Executive Secretary to this committee—known as the “Forrestal Committee”—and appointed Harvard Law professor Edmund Morris Morgan, Jr. (1879-1966) as chair. The Edmund M. Morgan Papers in the Harvard Law School Library cover the period 1925-1949 and represent his work on several national committees, plus his career teaching at Harvard. Included in this collection are seven volumes of materials that Professor Morgan collected while serving as chair of the Forrestal Committee on the UCMJ. All these items have been digitized and are now accessible in full text below. The digitization of the Morgan Papers and their addition to the Military Legal Resources site is a joint project of the Harvard Law School Library, The Judge Advocate General’s School Library, and The Library of Congress.