Military Review English Edition March-April 2016 | Page 128

French nation and the republic’s political leaders, the French army to France’s allies, and the French army to its enemies. Each relationship tells us something important. First, Greenhalgh describes the way a succession of French military commanders sparred with the civil government while, at the same time, depending on the politicians to mobilize and remobilize public support for the war. Second, with France’s allies, Greenhalgh suggests the many ways that French generals found Douglas Haig (and later John Pershing), difficult partners in the project of war. Third, in its lifeor-death struggle with the most powerful army in the world, the author believes the French army ultimately proved to be a more successful “learning organization” than its German enemy was. With this book, along with her previous works Victory Through Coalition and Foch in Command, Greenhalgh has solidified her place as one of the most important of our current World War I historians. More important, The French Army and the First World War will help balance what the author believes are the unfair judgments of contemporary British observers, as well as the distortions found in the received views expressed in current English-language historiography. This new volume reflects both her own extensive research into the French war effort as well as a comprehensive summary of the new works appearing on the war. It is well documented and well supported by detailed maps, and when considering the topic of the French army in World War I, one should expect this book to serve as “the” scholarly reference for many years to come. Dr. Scott Stephenson, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas SHAPING U.S. MILITARY LAW: Governing a Constitutional Military Joshua E. Kastenberg, Ashgate Publishing Limited, Burlington, Vermont, 2014, 257 pages S haping U.S. Military Law: Governing a Constitutional Military is a comprehensive study of the evolution and shaping of U.S. military law. The military has requirements for a set of governing laws unique to the culture and discipline of the 126 military, yet it must allow for a degree of transparency and civilian oversight commensurate with the military being subordinate to civil authority. Joshua Kastenberg’s central idea addresses the supposition by many legal academicians that the federal judiciary (the U.S. Supreme Court and the appropriate appellate courts) largely shows deference to the military establishment, thereby allowing the military to provide its own legal oversight and operate as a questionable anomaly. This is a common friction point of many of the cases the author uses to address this claim. Two major themes recur throughout the book: the personalities of the Supreme Court justices throughout the years, and the ways their personal jurisprudence helped shape military law. The author provides surprising insight into the political leanings of the justices and which cases they did or did not address. From his research findings, you could also expect which justice would likely write the dissenting opinion. It might come as a surprise to the reader that “politics of the court” are alive and well even at the Supreme Court level. The other recurring theme is how the courts attempted to define the jurisdiction of crimes committed by service members that might otherwise be the purview of a civil court, such as rape of a civilian in an off-post apartment or sexual assault of a minor. The main idea )