Minimum Competence

This Day in Legal History: SCOTUS Impeachment On March 12, 1804, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase. Chase, a Federalist appointed to the Court in 1796, had become a controversial figure during a period of intense political division between the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans. Members of Congress accused him of allowing his political vi...

This Day in Legal History: Confederate States Constitution On March 11, 1861, delegates of the newly formed Confederate States adopted the Constitution of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama. The document closely resembled the United States Constitution in structure, language, and institutional design, reflecting the Confederacy’s claim that it was preserving the original cons...

This Day in Legal History: Blue Sky Laws On March 10, 1911, Kansas enacted the first “blue sky law” in the United States, marking a significant development in the regulation of securities markets. The statute was designed to protect investors from fraudulent investment schemes that had become increasingly common in the early twentieth century. At the time, promoters frequently sold speculative sec...

This Day in Legal History: The Amistad On March 9, 1841, the U.S. Supreme Court decided United States v. The Amistad , ruling that a group of Africans who had seized control of the Spanish ship La Amistad were free individuals who had been illegally enslaved. The case began after the captives, led by Sengbe Pieh—often called Cinqué—revolted against the ship’s crew while being transported from Cuba...

This Day in Legal History: FDR Declares Bank Holiday On March 6, 1933, just two days after taking office, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a nationwide bank holiday in response to the escalating financial panic of the Great Depression. At the time, banks across the country were collapsing as frightened depositors rushed to withdraw their savings. The closures threatened to completely desta...

This Day in Legal History: Boston Massacre On March 5, 1770, a confrontation between British soldiers and American colonists in Boston turned deadly in what became known as the Boston Massacre. Tensions had been rising for months as British troops occupied the city to enforce parliamentary taxes that many colonists believed were unjust. On that evening, a crowd gathered near the Boston Custom Hous...

This Day in Legal History: Lincoln’s Second Inaugural On March 4, 1865, Abraham Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address as he began his second term as President of the United States. The speech came during the final weeks of the Civil War, when Union victory was increasingly likely but the country remained deeply divided. Instead of celebrating the nearing end of the war, Lincoln used the m...

This Day in Legal History: Tenth Circuit Act On March 3, 1863, Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1863, quietly reshaping the structure of the United States Supreme Court in the middle of the Civil War. The Act increased the number of Supreme Court justices from nine to ten. This expansion created an additional seat that President Abraham Lincoln could fill at a critical moment in the nation’s h...

This Day in Legal History: Jones Act On March 2, 1920, Congress passed the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, better known as the Jones Act. Enacted in the aftermath of World War I, the statute reflected a national effort to strengthen the United States’ merchant marine fleet. Lawmakers believed that a robust domestic shipping industry was essential to both economic growth and national defense. The Act...

This Day in Legal History: Reichstag Fire Decree On February 27, 1933, the German parliament building, the Reichstag, was set ablaze in Berlin, an event that would alter the course of constitutional government in Germany. The fire broke out just weeks after Adolf Hitler had been appointed Chancellor. Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe was arrested at the scene, and Nazi officials quickly blamed...

This Day in Legal History: Grand Teton National Park On February 26, 1929, Congress officially established Grand Teton National Park, preserving one of the most striking mountain landscapes in the American West. While today the park is known for its natural beauty and wildlife, its creation was rooted in significant legal and political conflict. The legislation reflected a growing national commitm...

This Day in Legal History: Hiram Rhodes Revels On February 25, 1870, Hiram Rhodes Revels was sworn in as the first African American to serve in the United States Senate. His election came during the turbulent Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War, a period defined by constitutional change and political uncertainty. Revels represented Mississippi, a former Confederate state that had only r...

This Day in Legal History: Marbury v. Madison On February 24, 1803, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Marbury v. Madison, a case that permanently reshaped American constitutional law. The dispute arose after President John Adams appointed several “midnight judges” in the final hours of his administration. One of those appointees, William Marbury, never received his commission because it was not deliv...

This Day in Legal History: Order 9066 On this day in legal history, enforcement of Executive Order 9066 began in earnest following its signing by Franklin D. Roosevelt earlier in February 1942. The order authorized the military to designate exclusion zones and remove individuals deemed security risks from certain areas of the country. In practice, it led to the forced relocation and incarceration...

This Day in Legal History: Jacobson v. Massachusetts On this day in legal history, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), a case that defined the balance between individual liberty and public health. The dispute arose during a smallpox outbreak when Massachusetts authorized local governments to require vaccinations. Henning Jacobson refused the vaccine, arguing...

This Day in Legal History: Edison Receives Patent on Phonograph On February 19, 1878, Thomas Edison received a patent for one of his most transformative inventions: the phonograph. The device could record and reproduce sound, a breakthrough that stunned the public and reshaped the relationship between technology and creativity. Until that point, copyright law primarily protected written works such...

This Day in Legal History: Aaron Burr Arrested (But Not For That) On February 18, 1807, former Vice President Aaron Burr was arrested in the Mississippi Territory on charges of treason against the United States. Once one of the most powerful men in the young republic, Burr had fallen from political grace after killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel and drifting to the margins of national life. Feder...

This Day in Legal History: Wesberry v. Sanders On February 17, 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Wesberry v. Sanders, one of the most consequential voting rights cases in American history. The dispute arose from Georgia’s congressional districts, where vast population disparities meant that some districts had two or even three times as many residents as others. In practical terms, this imbalanc...

This Day in Legal History: Powell v. Alabama On February 16, 1932, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Powell v. Alabama, a case that would become a cornerstone of modern criminal procedure. The appeal arose from the notorious Scottsboro Boys prosecutions in Alabama, where nine young Black men were accused of raping two white women aboard a train. The trials moved with alarming...

This Day in Legal History: Bruno Hauptmann Convicted On February 13, 1935, a New Jersey jury convicted Bruno Hauptmann of kidnapping and murdering the infant son of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh. The crime had transfixed the nation for nearly three years and was widely labeled the “Crime of the Century.” The child was taken from the Lindbergh home in 1932, and despite a ransom payment, was later...

This Day in Legal History: NAACP Founded On February 12, 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in New York City. Sparked by ongoing racial violence, including the 1908 Springfield Race Riot in Illinois, a group of Black and white activists came together to launch an interracial effort to combat racial injustice. The NAACP would become the most inf...

This Day in Legal History: Nelson Mandela Released On February 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison in South Africa after 27 years of incarceration, marking a seismic shift in the country’s legal and political landscape. Mandela’s release followed a period of secret negotiations between the apartheid government and the African National Congress (ANC), and it signaled th...

This Day in Legal History: 25th Amendment On February 10, 1967, the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, formally addressing presidential succession and disability for the first time in constitutional text. The need for such clarity had become urgent after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s repeated illnesses during...

This Day in Legal History: Opium is Prohibited in the US On February 9, 1909, the United States took its first significant federal step toward regulating narcotics when Congress passed a law banning the importation of opium for non-medical purposes. The act, officially titled “An Act to Prohibit the Importation and Use of Opium for Other Than Medicinal Purposes,” marked the beginning of a century-...

This Day in Legal History: 20th Amendment On February 6, 1933, the 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution officially went into effect, reshaping the timeline of federal political power transitions in the United States. Commonly known as the “Lame Duck Amendment,” it was ratified just weeks earlier, on January 23, 1933, but became operative on this day. The amendment moved the inauguration dates o...