10 U.S.C. § 6321
Section 6321 · Officers: 40 years
Amended 1 time on record
Applied in 5 court decisions — leading case 290 Mich. App. 551 - Megee v. Carmine (2010)
Most recently applied in Vlach v. Vlach (October 2017)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
(a) Each officer of the Regular Navy or the Regular Marine Corps holding a permanent appointment in the grade of warrant officer, W–1, or above who applies for retirement after completing 40 or more years of active service shall be retired by the Secretary of the Navy.
(b) For the purpose of this section, an officer's years of active service are computed by adding all his active service in the armed forces.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
In subsection (a) the words “Regular” and “holding a permanent appointment in the grade of warrant officer, W–1, or above” are inserted for clarity. The word “shall” is substituted for the word “may” because the Attorney General has construed R.S. 1443 as conferring a right to retirement upon officers who apply for it after 40 years of service (30 Op. Atty. Gen. 406). The words “from active service” are omitted as surplusage. The words “after completing 40 or more years of active service” are substituted for the words “has been forty years in the service of the United States” for clarity.
In subsection (b) the accepted meaning of the words “service of the United States” is spelled out for clarity. They have been consistently interpreted to include active service in the armed forces as defined in this title.