Minimum Competence

This Day in Legal History: The National Defense Act of 1916 On this day in 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the National Defense Act, the law that quietly built the legal scaffolding for how the United States deploys soldiers, both abroad and at home, for the next century-plus. The Act roughly tripled the size of the regular Army, formally created the National Guard as a federalized reserve f...

This Day in Legal History: The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 On this day in 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act, also called the Snyder Act, declaring that all Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the United States were U.S. citizens. It is one of those laws that sounds, in retrospect, like it cannot possibly have been necessary — and yet it was. Fo...

This Day in Legal History: The First Act of Congress On this day in 1789, President George Washington signed the first statute ever enacted by Congress under the new Constitution — “An Act to Regulate the Time and Manner of Administering Certain Oaths,” codified at 1 Stat. 23. The substance was modest: the law prescribed the form of the oath that members of Congress, federal judges, and executive...

This Day in Legal History: Rhode Island Ratifies the Constitution, 1790 On this day in 1790, Rhode Island became the thirteenth and final original state to ratify the United States Constitution, doing so by a margin of 34 to 32 at a convention in Newport. Rhode Island’s hesitation had been considerable: the state refused to send delegates to the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, and twice rejected...

This Day in Legal History: The Indian Removal Act of 1830 On this day May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, authorizing the federal government to “negotiate” the relocation of Native American tribes east of the Mississippi to lands in what is now Oklahoma. On its face the statute framed displacement as voluntary, treaty-based, and compensated; in practice it became...

This Day in Legal History: Black Monday and the End of the NIRA On May 27, 1935 — a day quickly dubbed “Black Monday” by the press — the United States Supreme Court delivered three unanimous decisions that gutted central pieces of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in a single morning. The most consequential was A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States , in which the Court struck down the Nation...

This Day in Legal History: Andrew Johnson Impeachment Trial Ends On May 26, 1868, the United States Senate ended the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, bringing one of the most dramatic constitutional confrontations in American history to a close. Johnson had been impeached by the House of Representatives earlier that year after clashing repeatedly with Congress over Reconstruction. At...

This Day in Legal History: Truman Doctrine On May 22, 1947, President Harry S. Truman signed legislation authorizing American aid to Greece and Turkey, giving legal force to what became known as the Truman Doctrine. The law provided economic and military assistance to both countries at a moment when U.S. leaders feared that instability in the eastern Mediterranean could expand Soviet influence. Gr...

This Day in Legal History: First Speed Limit Law On May 21, 1901, Connecticut became the first U.S. state to pass a law regulating the speed of motor vehicles. The law set a speed limit of 12 miles per hour in cities and 15 miles per hour on country roads. That may sound almost comically slow now, but at the beginning of the twentieth century, the automobile was still a new and disruptive technolo...

This Day in Legal History: Homestead Act On May 20, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law, creating one of the most consequential land distribution systems in American history. The statute allowed eligible settlers to claim 160 acres of federal land, so long as they lived on it, improved it, and cultivated it for a required period of time. At a basic level, the law trea...

This Day in Legal History: 27th Amendment On May 19, 1992, the 27th Amendment to the United States Constitution was officially published in the Federal Register , ending one of the longest and oddest ratification stories in American legal history. The amendment provides that any law changing the compensation of members of Congress cannot take effect until after an election for the House of Represe...

This Day in Legal History: Plessy v. Ferguson On May 18, 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Plessy v. Ferguson , a case that became one of the most infamous constitutional decisions in American history. The dispute arose from a Louisiana law requiring separate railroad cars for Black and white passengers. Homer Plessy, who was of mixed race, deliberately sat in a whites-only rail car to challeng...

This Day in Legal History: Abe Fortas Resigns SCOTUS On May 15, 1969, Justice Abe Fortas resigned from the United States Supreme Court, becoming the first justice to leave the Court under the threat of impeachment. Fortas had been appointed to the Court in 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, a close friend and political ally. His reputation had already been damaged in 1968, when Johnson tried to...

This Day in Legal History: Frontiero v. Richardson On May 14, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Frontiero v. Richardson , a major case in the development of constitutional protections against sex discrimination. The case began when Sharron Frontiero, a lieutenant in the United States Air Force, sought dependent benefits for her husband. Under federal law at the time, a male service member could...

This Day in Legal History: Mexican-American War On May 13, 1846, Congress approved President James K. Polk’s request for a declaration of war against Mexico, formally beginning the Mexican-American War. Polk had told Congress that Mexico had “invaded our territory and shed American blood on American soil,” after a clash between Mexican forces and American troops near the Rio Grande. The problem wa...

This Day in Legal History: Anti-Spitting Laws On May 12, 1896, New York City adopted one of the country’s best-known early anti-spitting laws, aimed at stopping the spread of tuberculosis. At the time, tuberculosis was one of the deadliest diseases in American cities, and public health officials were increasingly focused on sputum as a source of infection. The new rule made it illegal to spit in p...

This Day in Legal History: Christmas is Canceled in Massachusetts On May 11, 1659, the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law making it illegal to celebrate Christmas. The law imposed a fine of five shillings on anyone who observed the holiday by feasting, taking the day off from work, or engaging in other forms of celebration. To modern readers, this can sound like a strange kind of anti-holiday l...

This Day in Legal History: V-E Day On May 8, 1945, the Allies celebrated Victory in Europe Day, or V-E Day, after Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender brought the European theater of World War II to an end. The surrender did more than end a military campaign; it opened the door to one of the most important legal reckonings in modern history. In the months that followed, the Allied powers created...

This Day in Legal History: Salmon P. Chase Dies On May 7, 1873, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase died, ending one of the most unusual legal and political careers in American history. Chase had been an antislavery lawyer, a U.S. senator, governor of Ohio, Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of the Treasury, and then Chief Justice of the United States. He was also one of the many talented and ambitious men aro...

This Day in Legal History: Chinese Exclusion Act On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act into law. The law imposed a 10-year ban on the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States. It also made Chinese immigrants already in the country ineligible for naturalized citizenship, marking a major turn toward federal immigration restriction. The National Arch...

This Day in Legal History: Prayer in … Local Government Meetings? On this day in legal history, May 5, 2014, the Supreme Court decided Town of Greece v. Galloway , a major Establishment Clause case about prayer at local government meetings. The town of Greece, New York, opened its monthly board meetings with prayers delivered by invited clergy. For years, nearly all of those clergy were Christian,...

This Day in Legal History: Freedom Riders On May 4, 1961, the first Freedom Riders left Washington, D.C., by bus for New Orleans, beginning a direct challenge to segregation in interstate travel. The riders were an interracial group organized by the Congress of Racial Equality, and they set out to test whether Southern states and private carriers would follow federal law. The Supreme Court had alr...

This Day in Legal History: May Day vs. Law Day On May 1, 1958, the United States marked the first Law Day, a civic observance created after President Dwight D. Eisenhower designated the date as a national occasion to honor the rule of law. Eisenhower’s proclamation called on lawyers, journalists, broadcasters, schools, and civic groups to help the public better understand the American legal system...

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This Day in Legal History: Rodney King On April 29, 1992, a California jury acquitted four Los Angeles police officers charged in the beating of Rodney King, a Black motorist whose assault had been captured on videotape the year before. The beating took place on March 3, 1991, after a police chase, when officers repeatedly struck King while a bystander recorded the incident from nearby. The footag...