Minimum Competence

This Day in Legal History: Nixon’s Plumbers On January 7, 1972, President Richard Nixon announced the formation of a special unit within the White House to investigate and prevent leaks of classified information, which would eventually evolve into the so-called “Plumbers” unit. This decision followed the publication of the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, which deeply embarrassed the Ni...

This Day in Legal History: January 6 Insurrection On January 6, 2021, a significant and unprecedented legal and constitutional crisis unfolded in the United States. As a joint session of Congress convened to certify the Electoral College results of the 2020 presidential election, a mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol. The attack followed weeks of false claims...

This Day in Legal History: Federal Court Strikes Down “Balanced Treatment” Law in Arkansas On January 5, 1982, a federal district court in Arkansas issued a landmark ruling in McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education , striking down a state law that required public schools to give “balanced treatment” to both evolution and creation science. The law, known as Act 590, had been passed in 1981 and manda...

This Day in Legal History: Fundamental Laws of 1906 On December 30, 1905, Tsar Nicholas II signed the “Fundamental Laws of 1906,” marking a pivotal moment in the Russian Empire’s struggle between autocracy and constitutionalism. This act came in response to the Revolution of 1905, a period of mass unrest fueled by political repression, economic hardship, and a humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japan...

This Day in Legal History: Wounded Knee On December 29, 1890, the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry Regiment surrounded a Lakota Sioux encampment near Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The soldiers had orders to disarm the Lakota, who had recently fled the Standing Rock Reservation following the killing of Sitting Bull. Tensions were high, and as troops attempted to confiscat...

This Day in Legal History: Federal Reserve Act On December 23, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law, creating the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States. The law was the culmination of decades of debate over banking reform, intensified by the financial panic of 1907. The Act aimed to provide the country with a safer, more flexible,...

This Day in Legal History: Bernhard Goetz On this day in legal history, December 22, 1984, Bernhard Goetz shot and wounded four young Black men—Troy Canty, Barry Allen, Darrell Cabey, and James Ramseur—on a New York City subway train. Goetz, who was white, claimed the men had attempted to rob him and that he acted in self-defense. The case quickly became a national sensation, exposing deep racial...

This Day in Legal History: Entrapment as Defense On December 19, 1932, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Sorrells v. United States , a case that reshaped how American courts evaluate government conduct in criminal investigations. The case involved a Prohibition-era prosecution in which a federal agent repeatedly pressured the defendant to obtain illegal liquor. The Court held that criminal conviction...

This Day in Legal History: Trump Impeached On December 18, 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald J. Trump, marking the third presidential impeachment in American history. The impeachment followed a months-long investigation centered on Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. House Democrats alleged that the president abused the powers of his office by pressuring a foreig...

This Day in Legal History: Project Blue Book Ends On this day in legal history, December 17, 1969, the U.S. Air Force officially terminated Project Blue Book, its two-decade-long investigation into unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Launched in 1952 during a peak in UFO sightings and Cold War anxiety, Project Blue Book reviewed over 12,000 reports of aerial phenomena. The Air Force concluded that...

This Day in Legal History: West Coast Hotel On December 16, 1936, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish , a case that would become a cornerstone in constitutional law and mark a significant turning point in the Court’s approach to economic regulation. At issue was the constitutionality of Washington State’s minimum wage law for women, which had been challenge...

This Day in Legal History: Bill of Rights Ratified On December 15, 1791, the Bill of Rights was officially ratified, marking a foundational moment in American legal history. With Virginia becoming the crucial eleventh state to approve the measure, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution achieved the three-fourths majority required for adoption. These amendments were crafted in response t...

This Day in Legal History: Bush v. Gore On December 12, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Bush v. Gore , effectively ending the Florida recount and resolving the 2000 presidential election in favor of George W. Bush. The per curiam opinion held that the Florida Supreme Court’s method for ordering a manual recount violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Ame...

This Day in Legal History: Madoff Arrested On December 11, 2008, Bernard L. Madoff was arrested by federal agents and charged with securities fraud, marking the start of one of the most consequential white-collar crime cases in American legal history. Madoff, a former NASDAQ chairman and respected figure in the investment world, confessed to running a Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of inves...

This Day in Legal History: Gregory v. Chicago On this day in legal history, December 10, 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Gregory v. City of Chicago , a case involving the arrest of civil rights demonstrators under a local disorderly conduct ordinance. The demonstrators, led by comedian and activist Dick Gregory, had peacefully marched from Chicago’s City Hall to the home of Ma...

This Day in Legal History: SCOTUS Intervenes in 2000 Presidential Election On this day in legal history, December 9, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court intervened in the presidential election with a pivotal order in Bush v. Gore . The Court issued a 5-4 decision to halt the manual recount of ballots in Florida, which had been ordered by the Florida Supreme Court due to the razor-thin margin between Geor...

This Day in Legal History: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr’s Kid Sworn in as Justice On December 8, 1902, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was sworn in as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, beginning one of the most storied judicial careers in American history. Appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt, Holmes brought not just legal brilliance but a fierce sense of independence to the bench—qualit...

This Day in Legal History: 21st Amendment Ratified On December 5, 1933, the United States ratified the Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution, officially ending the era of national Prohibition. This amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, which had banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors since 1920. Prohibition, championed by temperance movements and moral...

This Day in Legal History: Skidmore On December 4, 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Skidmore v. Swift & Co. , a case interpreting the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The plaintiffs were firefighters employed by a private company who sought overtime pay for time spent waiting on the employer’s premises, even when not actively fighting fires. The Court ruled that such “waiting ti...

This Day in Legal History: Morgan v. Virginia On December 3, 1946, the NAACP filed the pivotal case Morgan v. Virginia , challenging state-enforced segregation on interstate buses. The case arose after Irene Morgan, a Black woman, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Greyhound bus traveling from Virginia to Maryland in 1944. Arrested and fined under Virginia law, Morgan appealed h...

This Day in Legal History: John Brown Assassinated On December 2, 1859, abolitionist John Brown was executed by hanging in Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia), following his conviction for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, murder, and inciting a slave insurrection. Brown had led a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry in October, attempting to seize weapons and incite a la...

This Day in Legal History: Rosa Parks Arrested On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated city bus. Parks, a 42-year-old Black seamstress and longtime activist, had been sitting in the “colored” section when the driver demanded she move. Her quiet but firm defiance violated local segregation laws, whi...

This Day in Legal History: Free Speech at the Movies On this day in legal history, November 25, 1915, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Commission of Ohio , holding that motion pictures were not protected under the First Amendment. The case arose when Ohio enacted a law requiring films to be approved by a censorship board before public exhibition....

This Day in Legal History: Lee Harvey Oswald Shot On November 24, 1963, two days after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the nation watched in shock as Lee Harvey Oswald—the alleged assassin—was gunned down on live television. The shooter, Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, entered the basement of the Dallas police headquarters and fatally shot Oswald as he was being transferred to the cou...

This Day in Legal History: Mississippi Burning On November 21, 1964, a federal grand jury convened in Meridian, Mississippi, and indicted 19 men in connection with the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner—three civil rights workers abducted and killed by the Ku Klux Klan during Freedom Summer. The brutal killings had shocked the nation, but Mississippi officials refused t...