This series contains records of all courts-martial proceedings held by the three services departments [1].

At the completion of each case, up to 1988, the record was sent to the Central Registry, Attorney-General's Department for registration. In the period up to 1960, the records were transferred to the Victorian Office of the Australian Archives for ease of reference by the service departments. From 1960 onwards, when these departments had been transferred to Canberra, all files were sent to the ACT Office of the Australian Archives by the Attorney-General's Department.

The registration of these files comprised the allocation of a single number and from 1901 to 1991 this ranged from 1 - 94226. The registers and indexes were maintained in Canberra. A quantity of records, within the file number range 80776 to 81663, deals with Japanese war crimes trials. The index cards for these files are available as CRS A3193/XM1 and A3194/XM1.  The requirement for the transcripts to be sent to the Attorney-General's Department was specified under Section 99(1) of the Defence Act 1903.

In 1982 the Defence Force (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act was passed and Part VIII of the Defence Act (relating to courts-martial) was repealed and replaced with a section which does not require transcripts of courts-martial proceedings to be sent to the Attorney-General's Department. The practice of sending files to the Attorney-General's Department continued however until 1988. The transcripts are now no longer received by the Attorney-General's Department.

In August 1988 a photocopy of item 81645 (from the Japanese War Crimes Trials section of the series) was transferred to the Australian Archives from the Australian War Memorial AWM54 series under the control symbol 1010/6/134 and accessioned into series A2663. The original was retained by the AWM. 

In 1995 courts-martial files from the Defence correspondence file series A703 were top-numbered into A471. The Defence Archival and Information Section allocated courts-martial file numbers and annotated the control records of A703 to show where top-numbering had occurred. The superceded file numbers from A703 have been recorded in brackets beneath the courts-martial file number on the consignment list.