When must a challenge to a military court clerk or interpreter be made, and who decides it?
General information · Not legal advice
Material to check
In the trial record of a practice case we read the part that names the clerk or interpreter, any paper setting out the ground for the challenge, and the ruling of the military court, so that the file shows when the ground was known and when the challenge was made.
These are types of material to look for, not evidence already verified by PRO SE.
Where readings differ
One reading takes the provision as an instruction to import the rules of its own section: those rules on exclusion, challenge and avoidance apply to the military court's clerk and interpreter, one item among them being left out, and the challenge is decided by the military court to which they belong, by a ruling, so the time to make it lives in the applied rules rather than in this provision itself.
Another reading stresses that this provision nowhere states a period, an event from which a period runs, or what becomes of a challenge made late, and that the item it excludes does not reach clerks and interpreters at all, so the record has to show both the applied rules' period and the stage the case had reached.
Your judgment
Where the applied rules set a period, what in the file shows the date the ground for the challenge became known?
PRO SE does not make this decision or keep a case record on this public site.When to reconsider
We look at this again if the provision is amended to set the period itself or to bring the excluded item back within it, or if a court decision states what the excluded item covers or when a challenge becomes late.