William Pollard III of Kornstein Veisz Wexler & Pollard was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a judge on the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review on June 21. The court, based in Washington, D.C., reviews convictions before a military commission for errors of law and fact. It was created by the Military Commissions Act of 2006 in the wake of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006), in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the military tribunals created by President George W. Bush to try prisoners at Guantánamo Bay were unconstitutional unless prisoners were given further protections.
The court consists of both military and civilian justices and uses a hybrid of civil and military procedure. Initially, the civilian justices were appointed by the Secretary of Defense. In 2009, the law was changed to require that they be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and the previous appointees stepped down. Pollard and Duke Law School professor Scott Silliman, confirmed on the same day, are the first civilian judges confirmed under the new law.
