Joel Zivot and Ingrid Burke Friedman Archives - JURIST - Commentary

Commentaries by Joel Zivot and Ingrid Burke Friedman

Evgeny Feldman / Novaya Gazeta, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Alexei Navalny: A New ‘Invitation to a Beheading’

December 20, 2024 02:49:34 pm

Exactly three years ago, I came back to Russia after treatment following my poisoning. I was arrested at the airport. And for three years, I’ve been in prison. And for three years I’ve been answering the same question. Prisoners ask it simply and directly. Prison officials inquire about it cautiously, with the recorders turned off. [...]

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Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.