In July 1995, the Secretary of the Army, Togo D. West, Jr., issued a memorandum to speed the Army's implementation of the Administrative Dispute Resolution Act (ADRA) of 1990. In expressing his support for ADR programs, the Secretary directed Army personnel to use ADR procedures in appropriate cases. As the Secretary explained, the goal is to resolve disputes at the earliest stage feasible, by the fastest and least expensive method, and at the lowest organizational level.
To facilitate implementation of the ADRA, the Secretary designated the Principal Deputy General Counsel as the Army's Dispute Resolution Specialist. As a first step toward fulfilling the Secretary's mandate to encourage Army ADR initiatives, the Office of the Army General Counsel, under the guidance of the Dispute Resolution Specialist, compiled a report to take stock of the current state of ADR in the Army.
The report, shows that Army ADR programs are widespread and comprehensive--especially within the Army Corps of Engineers, the Army Material Command, and throughout the Judge Advocate General's (JAG) Corps. Less well known, however, are the ADR programs run by other Army components such as the U.S. Army Forces Command (FORSCOM), and the U.S. Army, Europe V Corps (V Corps).
In the environmental area, for example, FORSCOM has published The Environmental Specialist Newsletter, which discusses ADR in environmental programs. Meanwhile, the V Corps has put ADR techniques to use in the international law area--negotiating, for example, with German authorities concerning jurisdiction over U.S. personnel who commit crimes in cases of concurrent jurisdiction--and in the criminal law area, where the Corps has utilized an ADR program covering pretrial agreements, discharges, stipulations of testimony, and conditional waivers of administrative separations.