A recent blog from November about the Ex College at Tufts University: Story (tufts.edu)
Article here: A Most Atrocious Crime
Introduction to Law, Life, and the Teaching of Legal History: Essays in Honour of G. Blaine Baker (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022) 7-35.
Essay here:
The President is granted the pardon power under Article II, section 2 of the Constitution. Since 1894 it has been the responsibility of the Office of the Pardon Attorney in the Department of Justice to provide the President with recommendations for the exercise of the executive clemency power, which applies only to federal criminal offenses. Clemency may involve issuing pardons, commuting sentences, remitting fines or restitution, or granting a reprieve.
The Constitution imposes several qualifications for Congressional service, most notably in Article I, s2 & 3 (which sets out age, citizenship, and residency requirements). It also precludes members from Congress from serving in the executive or judicial branches through the Incompatibility Clause in Article I s6. This clause was designed to foreclose patronage and corruption, but also precludes a parliamentary-style of government in which office holders have both legislative and executive powers. Interestingly, the clause does not forbid simultaneous executive and judicial service, reflected by examples such as John Jay and John Marshall (both of whom served as Secretary of State while also sitting on the Supreme Court). Today such a practice would be viewed as constitutionally suspect.
While George Washington is known as the first president of the U.S., there were 8 “presidents of the United States in Congress Assembled” between 1781-1789 appointed under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. The name of only one is still generally recognizable to us today: John Hancock, who had earlier served as president of the Continental Congress, and provided his oversized signature on the Declaration of Independence.
California, Alaska, and Illinois now have pet custody laws that permit judges to determine what is in the best interests of a pet when settling disputes in divorce cases. These laws allow judges to treat these cases more like child custody disputes rather than property disputes. This is part of a nation-wide trend towards granting pets more expansive protection, such as including them in domestic violence protection orders (33 states and counting), and allowing trust funds for pets.
Leap year birthdays can be a source of legal issues for people born on February 29th (often called “leapers”), particularly with regard to medical or government records. Some computer systems do not accept February 29th as a valid date, or alternatively do not take into account leap years and print invalid expiration dates (such as February 29, 2015, which did not exist) on driver’s licenses, insurance policies, and other documents. Because of the potential issues related to having a birthday that is only officially recognized every four years, there are recorded instances of physicians altering birth certificates so that the birth date would not fall on February 29th — an illegal practice.
Martin Luther King Day (officially known as “Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.”, and unofficially as ‘MLK Day’), is observed on the third Monday of January in recognition of King’s birthday on January 15th, and is the last federal holiday created in the U.S. The holiday was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, and was first observed in 1986 and by all states in some form in 1991. It was not until 2000 that the holiday was named after King by all states. Alabama and Mississippi are the last remaining states to do a joint commemoration of MLK Day and Robert E. Lee’s birthday.
Until 1883, there was little standardization of time zones in the U.S., with railroads using 56 different time standards across the country. The General Time Convention established by the railroads set four time zones running from east to west, based on time set by the U.S. Naval Observatory. This helped reduce the number of train accidents, but there were no official national time zones set until the Standard Time Act passed by Congress in 1918.
The “Lame Duck Amendment” is more formally known as the 20th Amendment. Ratified in 1933, it moved up inauguration from March 4th — a month originally chosen to provide time for the newly-elected president to travel to the capital– to January 20th to limit the time that an outgoing president would be in office as a ‘lame duck’ prior to the end of his term. The last inauguration held in March was for Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933.
The first country to formally recognize the United States was Morocco in 1777. The treaty between these two countries, known as the Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship, was signed in 1786 and ratified in 1787 by the Confederation Congress. It remains the longest unbroken treaty relationship in U.S. history.