Secretary of War Pete Hegseth speaks at a press briefing on Operation Epic Fury on March 10, 2026, in Arlington, Va. (Eric Brann/Defense Department)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered a review of the legal functions within the military intended to better align what positions require a uniformed service member versus those that could be filled by a civilian.
Each service has 45 days to assess how to split functions — what should remain within the Judge Advocate General Corps, and what work is better suited for general counsel. Hegseth provided six months following the review to implement changes.
“For too long — over 20 years — legal shops across the services have grown bloated, duplicative, they’ve muddied lines of authority and pulled critical judge advocates away from what matters most: advising commanders in the fight, on operations [and] in deployed environments where seconds and minutes count,” Hegseth said last week in a statement.
Even before Hegseth became the military’s top civilian, the former National Guard officer had made clear his disdain for military lawyers, which are often referred to as JAG officers. Among his first actions as defense secretary, Hegseth fired the lead JAG officer of each of the military services.
Keith Scherer, a former Air Force JAG who now works as a defense attorney for courts-martial, said the review’s details and Hegseth’s public statements show that Hegseth aims to create a cultural shift toward the warrior ethos he has said is lacking in today’s military.
He aims to attract a certain type of lawyer to join the military — someone less corporate-minded who is a “warrior first and a lawyer second,” Scherer said. It lines up with Hegseth’s statements similar to those about maintaining fitness standards for general officers, he said.
“Hegseth isn’t mandating that cultural shift. He’s creating the conditions for it to happen on its own. The institution becomes inhospitable to one type and magnetic to another. Give it a few accession cycles and the corps looks different,” he said.
In his statement, Hegseth said JAG officers should focus on military justice, operational law, the law of armed conflict, deployed contracting, intelligence law and cyberspace. Civilians should handle acquisition, civilian personnel, intellectual property, real estate, military installation environmental concerns and litigation outside of military channels.
However, the review, which includes the Reserve and National Guard, comes as Hegseth has approved JAG officers to increasingly step into roles with the Justice Department that are outside the scope of the military, such as sitting as immigration judges and backfilling federal prosecutors’ offices.
“What in reality is happening is that he wants JAGs who are going to serve roles that are politically sensitive — not to have neutral functions, but to serve political ends,” said Frank Rosenblatt, a retired Army attorney and president of the National Institute of Military Justice.
Rosenblatt agreed there is room to evaluate legal functions that likely have become bloated. But, he said the military justice organization he represents has called on the military to follow the congressionally mandated process to reform the JAG Corps.
“This is important enough that there ought to be public proceedings [and] public records,” he said. “Let’s hear from witnesses. Let’s have some people representing a diverse perspective of views, whether that is a victims’ council, law of war experts, the defense bar, veterans organizations, the Department of Justice, all of these people who have something to say about the right way … to administer justice fairly in the service.”
Without this, the review process is left to just a few people trusted by Hegseth, Rosenblatt said. This could also create inconsistencies between the services.
