2017 US Code
Title 10 - Armed Forces
Subtitle C - Navy and Marine Corps
Part II - Personnel
Chapter 551 - Officers in Command
Sec. 5945 - Staff corps officers: limitation on power to command

An officer in a staff corps may command only such activities as are appropriate to his corps.

(Aug. 10, 1956, ch. 1041, 70A Stat. 371; Pub. L. 90–130, §1(21), Nov. 8, 1967, 81 Stat. 380.)

The provision of §7 of the Act of March 3, 1899 (supra), relating to relative rank is omitted as executed. The provision that the rank conferred upon staff corps officers shall not change their titles is omitted because these titles were abolished by §405 of the Officer Personnel Act of 1947 (34 U.S.C. 10a) and the corresponding line grades substituted. The cited proviso in the Act of June 24, 1910 (34 U.S.C. 253 (proviso)) is omitted as obsolete because the officers referred to were officers of the Construction Corps which has been abolished.

The first sentence of this section is phrased so as to reflect the accepted meaning of the cited provision. 34 U.S.C. 253, as worded, if interpreted literally, could be held to prohibit, for example, the assignment of members of the Medical Service Corps, Nurse Corps, and Hospital Corps to duty under officers of the Medical Corps, despite the fact that all of these corps were established by law within the Medical Department of the Navy. The provision is not so interpreted. It is understood to restrict only the types of activities that staff corps officers may command, and not to restrict to a single corps the personnel who may be assigned to an activity commanded by a staff corps officer.

1967—Pub. L. 90–130 struck out provision that an officer in the Nurse Corps may not exercise command.