What is Drumhead court-martial?
[[File:15.Pr Kenttäoikeus1944.jpg|thumb|right|300px|The drumhead court-martial of the [[Military of Finland|Finnish]] 15th Brigade in July 1944]] A '''drumhead court-martial''' is a [[court-martial]] that happens on the battlefield to hear important charges of crimes that happened during the battle. The term is said to come from the use of a [[drumhead]] as an improvised writing table.<ref>Definition from [http://www.bartleby.com/81/5394.html Brewer's Dictionary]</ref> == Origins == The earliest recorded use is in an English [[memoir]] of the [[Peninsular War]] (1807).<ref>'Court martial, n. 1.b. drumhead court-martial', ''Oxford English Dictionary Online'' (2009), citing [[Charles Shaw (British Army officer)|Sir Charles Shaw]], ''Personal memoirs and correspondence, comprising a narrative of the war ... in Portugal and Spain'' (1837), II, 449.</ref> The term sometimes is similar to [[summary offence|summary justice]]. It has an implied lack of judicial neutrality, as noted in the [[transcript]]s of the [[Nuremberg trials|trial at Nuremberg]] of [[Josef Bühler]].<ref>[http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-12/tgmwc-12-112-05.shtml Transcript] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200103111948/http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-12/tgmwc-12-112-05.shtml |date=2020-01-03 }} at the Nizkor project</ref> ==References== {{reflist}} {{Authority control}} [[Category:Courts (law)]] [[Category:Military law]] {{military-stub}}