The Service Rules That Implement the UCMJ: AR 27-10, JAGMAN, and DAFI 51-201

Military justice has three layers, not two. Congress writes the statute, the President writes the Manual for Courts-Martial, and each service writes its own regulation beneath both. The Army’s is AR 27-10, the Navy and Marine Corps use the JAGMAN, and the Air Force and Space Force use DAFI 51-201.

That third designation is worth pausing on, because it changed. The instruction was long cited as AFI 51-201, an Air Force instruction. It is now issued as DAFI 51-201, Administration of Military Justice, a Department of the Air Force instruction, and the difference is not cosmetic, because the Department includes the Space Force and the document’s own reach is therefore wider than its former name suggested. A citation to AFI 51-201 is a citation to a superseded designation. And the version matters as much as the name. A 2026 filing before the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals cites the instruction like this:

“Department of the Air Force Instruction 51-201, Administration of Military Justice, Jan. 9, 2026, para. 19.21, as amended by Department of the Air Force Guidance Memorandum to Department of the Air Force Instruction (DAFI) 51-201, Administration of Military Justice, Feb. 4, 2026”

Source: United States v. Cox, No. ACM 26038, appellate filing, United States Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals, footnote 9.

Two things are in that citation and both are about currency. The operative instruction is dated 9 January 2026; an earlier edition of the same instruction carries a different date and is not the one this filing cites. And it is already amended by a Guidance Memorandum of 4 February 2026, so the instruction and the memorandum are read together.

The pattern is the same one this site has met twice already. The Code needed a later Act read over it; the 2024 Manual needs Executive Order 14130 read over it; and this instruction needs a guidance memorandum read over it. A base document is not automatically the whole of the current operative text, and that is a rule about documents rather than about any one of them.

This page did not open the instruction itself and does not state what any paragraph of it provides. Two attempts at the Air Force e-publishing site returned HTTP 403.

This page sets out where that third layer gets its authority, the specific decisions the Uniform Code of Military Justice assigns to a Secretary or a service rather than to the President, and the limits that bind service regulations. It does not set out the content of any of the three documents, because none of them was opened. That is stated here and at the foot of the page.

It gives no advice and describes no service procedure.

The delegations the Code makes to a service

The Code names the recipient of each delegation, and reading those names is how the third layer becomes visible. Several of the Code’s delegations go to “the Secretary concerned” rather than to the President, and those are the ones the service documents implement.

Detailing military judges. Article 26(a): “The Secretary concerned shall prescribe regulations providing for the manner in which military judges are detailed for such courts-martial and for the persons who are authorized to detail military judges for such courts-martial.”

Defining reasonable availability of counsel. Article 38(b)(7): “The Secretary concerned shall, by regulation, define ‘reasonably available'” for individual military counsel, and “establish procedures for determining” whether requested counsel is reasonably available.

Delegating the power to excuse members. Article 25(f) permits the convening authority, “[u]nder such regulations as the Secretary concerned may prescribe”, to delegate the authority to excuse a member before assembly to the staff judge advocate, the legal officer, or another principal assistant.

Detailing special trial counsel. Article 24a(a): “Each Secretary concerned shall promulgate regulations for the detail of commissioned officers to serve as special trial counsel.”

Execution of confinement. Article 58(a) makes the place of confinement a matter for “such instructions as the Secretary concerned may prescribe”.

Termination of active service. Article 2(c) makes a person subject to the Code “until such person’s active service has been terminated in accordance with law or regulations promulgated by the Secretary concerned.”

The limits on what a service may prescribe

Three constraints appear in the Code itself, and they apply to the third layer as much as to the second.

Consistency with the statute. Article 36(a) provides that regulations “may not, except as provided in chapter 47A of this title, be contrary to or inconsistent with this chapter.” A service regulation has less room again, because it sits beneath the Manual as well as the Code.

Uniformity, where the Code requires it. Article 36(b): all rules made under that article “shall be uniform insofar as practicable.” For counsel availability, Article 38(b)(7) goes further: “To the maximum extent practicable, such regulations shall establish uniform policies among the armed forces while recognizing the differences in the circumstances and needs of the various armed forces.”

One express prohibition. Article 38(b)(7) forbids a specific refusal: regulations “may not prescribe any limitation based on the reasonable availability of counsel solely on the grounds that the counsel selected by the accused is from an armed force other than the armed force of which the accused is a member.” A cross-service request for individual military counsel cannot be refused on that ground alone.

That last provision is the clearest illustration of the hierarchy: Congress anticipated a particular regulatory rule and banned it in advance.

How the three layers relate

STATUTE       10 U.S.C. ch. 47 (UCMJ)       Congress
                  |  Art. 36 delegates procedure
  REGULATION    Manual for Courts-Martial      President
                  |  Art. 26(a), 38(b)(7), 24a(a), 25(f), 58(a), 2(c)
  SERVICE       AR 27-10 · JAGMAN · DAFI 51-201  Secretary concerned

Two consequences follow from the direction of that chain.

A service regulation cannot contradict the Code or the Manual made under it. That is the direction of the chain, and it is worth stating precisely because the obvious citation for it is the wrong one. Article 36(a) constrains presidential regulations: rules prescribed by the President “may not, except as provided in chapter 47A of this title, be contrary to or inconsistent with this chapter.” Article 36(b) then requires that “[a]ll rules and regulations made under this article” be uniform insofar as practicable, and the words “under this article” limit that duty to the presidential rules. Neither subsection is the authority for what binds a service regulation; a service rule is bound because it is made under a narrower delegation elsewhere in the Code and cannot exceed it.

What follows from that is narrower than it first looks. A service regulation cannot remove a protection the Code grants. Whether it may add one the Code is silent about is a different question, and it turns on the terms of the particular delegation rather than on Article 36. This page does not answer it for any of the three documents.

The same Code can produce different service practice. Where the Code delegates without requiring uniformity, the three documents may differ, and which one applies depends on the accused’s service. Article 1(2) adds a wrinkle worth knowing: “The Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard when it is operating as a service in the Navy, shall be considered as one armed force.”

One structural provision that is not delegated

Article 6(b)(1) keeps the assignment of judge advocates in the legal chain rather than leaving it to local command. That provision used to be Article 6(a); it was redesignated, without any change to its words, by Pub. L. 119–60 on 18 December 2025, which inserted a new subsection (a) ahead of it.

“The assignment for duty of judge advocates of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard shall be made upon the recommendation of the Judge Advocate General of the armed force of which they are members. The assignment for duty of judge advocates of the Marine Corps shall be made by direction of the Commandant of the Marine Corps.”

Source: 10 U.S.C. 806 (Article 6), subsection (b)(1), redesignated from former subsection (a) by Pub. L. 119–60, div. A, title V, §561(a), Dec. 18, 2025.

The same Act added a second paragraph to that subsection, and it belongs on this page. Article 6(b)(2) directs that assignment under the subsection “shall include qualified judge advocates in numbers sufficient to provide legal advice” to all commanders responsible for planning and organizing military operations, and to all commanders authorised to convene courts-martial under Articles 22 to 24. It then sets the qualifications for those judge advocates at the Article 6(a)(1) standard plus any further “education, expertise, or experience” the Judge Advocate General of the service concerned, or the Staff Judge Advocate to the Commandant for the Marine Corps, determines to be necessary.

That is a staffing obligation with a legal-competence floor attached, and it sits in the statute rather than in a service regulation. Its text was assembled from consecutive fragments rather than read in one continuous pass, so it is described here and not block-quoted.

The same subsection requires the Judge Advocates General, or senior members of their staffs, to “make frequent inspections in the field in supervision of the administration of military justice.” That supervisory duty is statutory, which means the third layer is inspected from above rather than self-policed.

What this page cannot contain, and why

Three documents, three services, three sets of provisions: how the Army administers non-judicial punishment under AR 27-10, how the JAGMAN structures Navy and Marine Corps defense services, and how DAFI 51-201 organises Department of the Air Force military justice.

None of that is here. Access was attempted on 19 September 2026. armypubs.army.mil returned an error page rather than AR 27-10, and the Navy route for the JAGMAN returned a 404. DAFI 51-201 was not reached. No provision of any of the three is quoted, numbered or paraphrased anywhere on this page.

The title names three documents. What this page delivers is the statutory authority those documents exercise, the specific decisions the Code hands them, and the limits Congress placed on them. The documents themselves need their own sources.

What this page does not decide

What any of the three documents provides. None was opened.

Which document applies to a given person. That depends on service, and Article 1(2) shows the answer is not always one document per uniform.

Whether a service regulation is consistent with the Code. Article 36(a) supplies the test; applying it requires both texts.

Where to go from here

The layer above these documents is in the Manual for Courts-Martial, and the statute above that in the UCMJ as federal statute. Where service organisation determines how the defense function is structured, see how military defense counsel works. The Army investigative procedure that sits alongside AR 27-10 is in AR 15-6 investigations.

Sources

• 10 U.S.C. 806 · Article 6, Judge advocates and legal officers · assignment on the recommendation of the Judge Advocate General, and the inspection duty
• 10 U.S.C. 838 · Article 38, Duties of trial counsel and defense counsel · the delegation to define “reasonably available”, the uniformity instruction, and the express prohibition
• 10 U.S.C. 826 · Article 26, Military judge · the delegation on detailing judges
• 10 U.S.C. 836 · Article 36, President may prescribe rules · the consistency ceiling and the uniformity requirement
• 10 U.S.C. chapter 47 · the Code in full · Articles 1(2), 2(c), 24a(a), 25(f) and 58(a), referred to above

• <a href="https://static.e-publishing.af.mil/production/1/afja/publication/dafi51-201/dafi51-201.pdf”>DAFI 51-201, Administration of Military Justice · the current designation of the Air Force instruction named in this page’s title · the document returned HTTP 403 and was not opened; only its designation and title are taken from a search result

• <a href="https://www.jag.navy.mil/documents/8962/EnclJAGINST5800.7GCH-2UnderRevision.pdf”>Manual of the Judge Advocate General, JAGINST 5800.7G CH-2, 1 December 2023 · the Navy and Marine Corps instruction; Change Transmittal 2 only, carrying revised Chapter I pages

What this page did not open, stated plainly because the title turns on it. AR 27-10 and the JAGMAN were opened, and one worked comparison between them is set out on the right to a military defense lawyer. The Air Force instruction was not opened; the last of the three was attempted twice at static.e-publishing.af.mil and returned HTTP 403 both times. Its current designation, DAFI 51-201, comes from a search result rather than from the document, and no provision of it is stated anywhere here. armypubs.army.mil returned an error page and the Navy route returned a 404 on 19 September 2026; DAFI 51-201 was not reached. The Manual for Courts-Martial was not opened either. No court decision was opened.

Checked on 19 September 2026, and checked for currency as well as for accuracy. Every statutory provision cited on this page was traced to the current United States Code: where a provision has not been amended since the 2023 edition, that edition’s text is the current text and its amendment record was read to confirm it; where a provision was amended by Pub. L. 118–159 (23 December 2024) or Pub. L. 119–60 (18 December 2025), the current text is quoted above and the amending Act is named beside it. The two Acts’ own texts were read to establish the complete list of provisions in this chapter that they changed. This was done through the Cornell mirror of the Code and through the Acts as published by the Government Publishing Office; the House preliminary Code could not be reached from here, so no third source confirms it. No independent expert review has taken place yet, and this page says so rather than implying one.