I feel that MRE 313 requirement is necessary and does fill its purpose to an extent. Although it explicitly states that inspections are not to be conducted to obtain evidence for trial by court-martial, I do not feel that it completely ensures commanders do not use inspections for conducting warrantless searches of military members. As demonstrated in U.S. v. Jackson, the commander was still able to obtain evidence of drug use from an inspection. The evidence was deemed permissible because the inspection was conducted unit-wide and no special attention was paid to the defendant.
MRE 313 provides a safeguard to military members, however, based on a commander’s level of authority and the nature of the military, there still remains the possibility
