Bush taps Fielding as new White House counsel News
Bush taps Fielding as new White House counsel

[JURIST] US President George Bush announced Tuesday that Fred F. Fielding [official profile] will serve as the new White House counsel [statement text]. Fielding, who has advised Bush throughout his presidency and sat on the 9/11 Commission [official website], will replace Harriet Miers [official profile], who announced her resignation [JURIST report] last week. Bush praised Miers, saying "she has devoted herself to the rule of law and the cause of justice," and called Fielding "uniquely qualified" to replace her.

Fielding served as General Counsel to President Reagan from 1981-86 and deputy counsel under President Nixon from 1970-72, and is regarded by observers as having the political experience that Bush may need to face challenges to executive authority from the new Democratically-controlled Congress. Fielding, 67, leaves his position as a partner at Wiley, Rein and Fielding [partner profile] in Washington, DC. The New York Times has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Bank of England granted political independence

On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from US

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese. Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.