Minimum Competence

This Day in Legal History: East German Border Sealed On August 13, 1961, the East German government abruptly sealed the border between East and West Berlin, cutting off one of the last open crossings between the Eastern Bloc and the West. Overnight, streets were blocked, barbed wire unrolled, and armed guards posted, turning neighbors into strangers by force. For years after World War II, Berlin h...

This Day in Legal History: Japanese PM Convicted of Accepting Bribes On August 12, 1983, former Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei was convicted of accepting bribes from the American defense contractor Lockheed Corporation in one of Japan’s most notorious political scandals. Tanaka, who served as prime minister from 1972 to 1974, was found guilty of taking approximately $2 million in illicit pa...

This Day in Legal History: First SCOTUS Decision On August 11, 1792, the United States Supreme Court issued its first reported decision in Georgia v. Brailsford . The case arose from the complex aftermath of the Revolutionary War, when questions about debts owed to British creditors came before the new federal judiciary. The State of Georgia had enacted laws seizing debts owed to British subjects,...

This Day in Legal History: Expansion of US House of Representatives On August 8, 1911, President William Howard Taft signed into law a measure that permanently expanded the size of the U.S. House of Representatives from 391 to 433 members. This change followed the 1910 census, which revealed significant population growth and shifts in where Americans lived. Under the Constitution, House seats are...

This Day in Legal History: Gulf of Tonkin Resolution On August 7, 1964, the U.S. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, dramatically reshaping the legal landscape of American military engagement. Prompted by reports—later disputed—of North Vietnamese attacks on the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin, the resolution granted President Lyndon B. Johnson broad authority to use military force in...

This Day in Legal History: Voting Rights Act On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, marking a pivotal moment in American legal and civil rights history. The legislation aimed to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment by prohibiting racial discrimination in voting, especially in the southern states where such practices were deeply entrenched. The Act outlawed...

This Day in Legal History: Reagan Fires Air Traffic Controllers On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan followed through on a warning to striking air traffic controllers by initiating the dismissal of over 11,000 of them. The controllers, members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), had walked off the job on August 3, demanding better wages, shorter hours, and impro...

This Day in Legal History: Switzerland’s Federal Charter On August 1, 1291, the seeds of what would become modern Switzerland were planted with the signing of the Federal Charter, or Bundesbrief , by the cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden. This wasn’t the dramatic formation of a nation-state as we think of it today—it was three rural Alpine communities making a legal pact for mutual defense a...

This Day in Legal History: Patent Office Opened On this day in legal history, July 31, 1790, the United States issued its first patent under the newly created Patent Act of 1790. The inaugural patent was granted to Samuel Hopkins of Vermont for a process of making potash, an essential industrial chemical used in soap and fertilizer production. Signed by President George Washington, Secretary of St...

This Day in Legal History: Medicare and Medicaid Signed into Being On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Social Security Amendments of 1965 into law, creating the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The signing took place at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, with former President Harry S. Truman—an early advocate for national health insurance—present and symbolically rec...

This Day in Legal History: Eisenhower Signs Act Creating NASA On July 29, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act into law, officially creating NASA. The legislation emerged in response to growing Cold War tensions and the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik the previous year. It marked a pivotal shift in U.S. federal priorities, establishing a civilian-led...

This Day in Legal History: Fourteenth Amendment Ratified On July 28, 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was officially adopted, reshaping the legal and constitutional landscape of the nation. Ratified in the wake of the Civil War, it was one of the Reconstruction Amendments designed to integrate formerly enslaved people into American civic life. Section 1 of the amend...

This Day in Legal History: National Security Act of 1947 On this day in legal history, July 25, 1947, Congress passed the National Security Act of 1947, fundamentally reshaping the American national security infrastructure in the wake of World War II. The legislation created a unified framework to coordinate defense and intelligence operations, aiming to prevent the bureaucratic fragmentation that...

This Day in Legal History: Apollo 11 On July 24, 1969, the Apollo 11 mission concluded when astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, returning from the first successful lunar landing. While the event was widely celebrated as a scientific and political triumph, it also raised an unexpectedly terrestrial legal issue: customs law. Upon ret...

This Day in Legal History: Grant Dies On July 23, 1885, Ulysses S. Grant—former president and Union general—died of throat cancer at age 63. While honored as a national hero, Grant spent his final years in financial ruin due to a high-profile fraud scandal. He had invested heavily in a Wall Street brokerage firm, Grant & Ward, run in part by his son and the scheming financier Ferdinand Ward. Ward...

This Day in Legal History: Jane Matilda Bolin Appointed to Bench On this day in 1939, Jane Matilda Bolin shattered a historic barrier when she was appointed by New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia as a judge of the city's Domestic Relations Court. With that appointment, Bolin became the first Black woman to serve as a judge in the United States. A graduate of Wellesley College and Yale Law Schoo...

This Day in Legal History: Liberation of Guam On July 21, 1944, U.S. forces began the liberation of Guam, a pivotal campaign in the Pacific Theater during World War II. The island, a U.S. territory since 1898, had been under Japanese occupation since December 1941. The American recapture of Guam not only had military significance but also triggered major legal and jurisdictional consequences. With...

This Day in Legal History: Narcotic Control Act On July 18, 1956, the Narcotic Control Act was signed into law, marking a significant escalation in the United States' punitive approach to drug policy. The act built upon earlier federal narcotics legislation but went much further in increasing criminal penalties and tightening government control over narcotic drugs and marijuana. Under the new law,...

This Day in Legal History: Second Confiscation Act On July 17, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Second Confiscation Act into law, dramatically expanding federal wartime powers during the Civil War. Building on a more limited first version passed in 1861, the new act authorized the seizure of property—particularly land and slaves—from individuals engaged in or supporting the rebellion. It...

This Day in Legal History: Residence Act On July 16, 1790, the U.S. Congress passed the Residence Act, establishing the District of Columbia as the permanent seat of the federal government. The decision was the product of a political compromise between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, brokered in part by James Madison, whereby southern states would support federal assumption of state debts...

This Day in Legal History: “A Friend of the Constitution” On July 15, 1819, Chief Justice John Marshall took the unusual step of anonymously defending one of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions in American history— McCulloch v. Maryland . Writing under the pseudonym A Friend of the Constitution , Marshall authored a series of essays published in the Philadelphia Union and the Alexandria...

This Day in Legal History: Sedition Act Passed On this day in legal history, July 14, 1798, the United States Congress passed the Sedition Act, one of the most controversial laws in the nation’s early political history. Part of the broader Alien and Sedition Acts, this law made it a crime to publish “any false, scandalous and malicious writing” against the federal government, Congress, or the Pres...

This Day in Legal History: Richard and Mildred Loving Arrested On this day in legal history, July 11, 1958, Richard and Mildred Loving were arrested in Central Point, Virginia, for violating the state’s Racial Integrity Act, which banned interracial marriage. The couple had legally wed in Washington, D.C., but upon returning to Virginia, they were charged with "cohabiting as man and wife, against...

This Day in Legal History: Second Bank of the United States Vetoed On July 10, 1832, President Andrew Jackson vetoed legislation that would have renewed the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, setting off a fierce political and constitutional conflict known as the “Bank War.” The Bank, originally chartered in 1816, acted as a quasi-governmental financial institution and played a centr...

This Day in Legal History: 14th Amendment Ratified On July 9, 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified—one of the most sweeping and hotly contested legal transformations in American history. Drafted during Reconstruction, its promise was bold: birthright citizenship, due process, and equal protection under the law. In theory, it was the legal nail in the coffin for Dred...