In all seriousness, it's a long historical role. In fact, last year we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the appointment of the very first judge advocate general in 1911, Colonel Henry Smith. We've had a long tradition of judge advocate generals in Canada, I think largely unknown by the populace as a general rule.
More recently, certainly since the new amendments were made in 1998, the role and responsibility of JAG were squarely put by Parliament in legislation in the National Defence Act. I alluded to those roles. Those are very important roles. There's the idea of being an adviser to the Governor General, the minister, the department, the Canadian Forces, on all matters of military law. Military law is not defined in the act or anywhere else, so it's a rather broad term, and we looked at it in that sense.
In basic terms, Mr. Norlock, for any legal issue that arises in CF activities or CF operations, including governance of the Canadian Forces, the Judge Advocate General provides that specialized military law legal advice. Of course, in doing so, we do so with the support of and in consultation with our other legal partners in town, whether they be at the Department of Justice or at the Department of Foreign Affairs.
You can imagine a number of issues that go from the high end of perhaps strategic analysis, which would be legal authority for the Canadian Forces to participate, let's say, in the conflict in Afghanistan or Libya, and what rules would be involved in terms of rules of engagement, targeting who from a legal perspective, and how can targeting be done in those types of circumstances.
We go right down to sort of human issues, or what we call military administrative law, which is dealing with all those issues from recruitment to release of CF members. Frankly, that's an area of law that really means a lot more to the men and women in uniform, the young troopers and soldiers and airmen and seamen, because those are the issues that we've alluded to in this committee like pay, like grievances, that really make or break morale. We advise on a whole gamut of those issues.
We try to break those down within our organization to three main areas: l military justice, which we're primarily discussing today; administrative law, which I just mentioned; and operational law, those things that relate to all the issues that arise on operations. We hear a lot of things in the press. We heard things about detainees and the transfer of detainees in Afghanistan. We had important roles, again, in working with our legal colleagues in town to respond to that.