Military Legal Career
Roberts-Smith joined the Australian Army Reserve in 1964, being commissioned as a Second Lieutenant (Royal Australian Infantry) in 1969. He transferred to the Australian Army Legal Corps with the rank of Captain on moving to Port Moresby in 1970. During his time in Papua New Guinea he was promoted to Major. In 1985 he was appointed as a Judge Advocate and a Defence Force Magistrate. He was promoted Lieutenant Colonel in 1986 and Colonel in June 1994. From 3 October 2001, Justice Roberts-Smith served as Acting Judge Advocate General (JAG) of the Australian Defence Force, and on 6 June 2002, he was promoted to Major General and appointed to the substantive position for a three-year term, becoming the first Western Australian to serve in the role. In 2005, he was reappointed by the Governor General of Australia for a further two years.
Read more about this topic: Len Roberts-Smith
Famous quotes containing the words military, legal and/or career:
“War both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valour, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.”
—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)