Convening authority (court-martial)
individual in US military law
In United States military law, a convening authority is an individual with certain legal powers granted under either the Uniform Code of Military Justice (i.e. the regular military justice system) or the Military Commissions Act of 2009 (for the Guantanamo military commissions).
Uniform Code of Military Justice
The term convening authority is used in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) when referring to an individual whose function is of critical importance in the US military justice system. The persons who may exercise this authority are defined in article 22 (10 U.S.C. § 822) for general court-martial, article 23 (10 U.S.C. § 823) for special court-martial, and article 24 (10 U.S.C. § 824) for summary court-martial. The convening authority decides on the disposition of cases to investigation and trial, and also selects the members of a court-martial.
The appointees serve as the military judge and members of the "panel", which decides the guilt or innocence of a person standing trial before the court-martial or military commission. Enlisted members on trial may demand that enlisted members be included on the panel. The court-martial then reports back to the convening authority their recommended verdict.
Unlike a civilian trial, the convening authority's "command prerogative" entitles them to amend or overturn the sentence of a court-martial. However, the convening authority may not set aside a finding of not guilty or increase the severity of a recommended punishment.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5166149. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Convening authority (court-martial)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.