Judge On Court of Appeals For The Armed Forces
Crawford was an active judge on the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF) from 1991 - 2006. She was appointed by President George H. W. Bush as a justice to the nation's highest military court in 1991 for a fifteen-year term. She served as its chief judge from 1999 - 2004. She is now a judge in senior status.
Crawford was the lone dissenter in a case involving Senator-Military Judge-Colonel Lindsey O. Graham. In 2006, by a vote of 4-1, the CAAF found unconstitutional the dual role of Lindsey O. Graham as a senator (Republican from South Carolina) and as a reserve officer sitting as a military judge on the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals. Crawford, in dissent, contended that there was no constitutional error in Senator Graham’s role, and that, even if there were, it was harmless. In the case in point, the military appellant Airman Lane had been unable to show he suffered any “actual prejudice.” She also said that, if Congress thought there were a constitutional problem in Sen. Graham’s service, it would have been free to take action, and it has not.
The majority's opinion relied upon the Constitution’s “incompatibility clause” in Article I, ” saying that “no person holding any office under the United States shall be a member of either House during his continuance in service.” It also relied upon separation-of-power principles, primarily as discussed by the Supreme Court in Buckley v. Valeo (1976) and three Supreme Court precedents from the 1990s dealing with appointments to military courts. Congress, Crawford wrote, “may well desire the synergism that would result from having a member of Congress serving as a trial or appellate judge in the military justice system.”
Read more about this topic: Susan J. Crawford
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