Rules changes

On December 1, 2022, amendments to the various fede rules took effect. No worries. There are no changes to the rules of evidence that would implicate Mil. R. Evid. 1102.

The manner in which the rules for federal courts are adopted is of interest for the robustness and transparency.

The federal rulemaking process is a detailed process that involves a minimum of seven stages of formal comment and review. . . .
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The Congress has authorized the federal judiciary to prescribe the rules of practice, procedure, and evidence for the federal courts, subject to the ultimate legislative right of the Congress to reject, modify, or defer any of the rules. The authority and procedures for promulgating rules are set forth in the Rules Enabling Act. 28 U.S.C. §§ 2071-2077.
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The Judicial Conference of the United States is also required by statute to "carry on a continuous study of the operation and effect of the general rules of practice and procedure." 28 U.S.C. § 331. As part of this continuing obligation, the Conference is authorized to recommend amendments and additions to the rules to promote:

simplicity in procedure,
fairness in administration,
the just determination of litigation, and
​the elimination of unjustifiable expense and delay.

You can read more about the process at Overview for the Bench, Bar, and Public. The transparency in rule making is shown there.

Meetings of the rules committees are open to the public and are widely announced. All records of the committees, including minutes of committee meetings, reports of the committees, suggestions and comments submitted by the public, statements of witnesses, transcripts of public hearings, and memoranda prepared by the reporters, are public and are maintained by the secretary. Copies of the rules and proposed amendments are available from the Rules Committee Support Office. The proposed amendments are also published on the Judiciary's website.

Minutes of the meetings are available at this link. And this link goes to an example of the publicly available minutes for May 2022.

A relevant example of part of the process is how Mil. R. Evid. 413, et. seq. came into effect. For discussions on politics influencing evidence rules, see Michael S. Ellis, Comment, The Politics Behind Federal Rules of Evidence 413, 414, and 415, 38 SANTA CLARA L. REV. 961 (1998); David P. Leonard, Federal Rules of Evidence and the Political Process. 22 FORDHAM URBAN L. J. 305 (1995).

At this link you can see pending rules changes for the coming years. And here you can see how they are packaged for the Supreme Court--something of a "legislative" history to guide practitioners, judges, and scholars.

There is a change proposed to Fed. R. Crim. Pro. 16. Some of us have argued for years that the military should adopt a version of Rule 16 for courts-martial. Many years ago, Judge Vowell required all counsel (as part of the TMO) to comply with Rule 16--trials with experts went more smoothly. Perhaps '16' might read well under R.C.M. 703(d)(2) for situations where a party expects to call an expert to testify?

Speaking of the Joint Service Committee. The website now includes a bit of transparency. The items are posted on the Contact Us page(?) if you are looking for them, or linked here.

The Joint Service Committee on Military Justice (JSC) has posted useful explanatory materials about the pending proposed changes to the Manual for Courts-Martial in response to the important military justice provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022. These include an executive summary of the changes, questions from the Defense Advisory Committee on Investigation, Prosecution, and Defense of Sexual Assault in the Armed Forces (DAC-IPAD), and the JSC responses.

Curtsey to GMJR Blog for the hat tip.

Cheers.