Eminent domain activists protest at Souter home News
Eminent domain activists protest at Souter home

[JURIST] Activists opposed to the controversial June 2005 US Supreme Court eminent domain [JURIST news archive] ruling in Kelo v. New London [opinion] which allowed the city of New London, Connecticut to expropriate private property for private redevelopment conferring economic benefits on the community, are protesting this weekend [advocacy alert] near the Weare, New Hampshire home of Supreme Court Justice David Souter [profile]. The activists, led by former California gubernatorial candidate Logan Darrow Clements [campaign website] and a local group called the Committee for the Preservation of Natural Rights [official website], want Souter evicted and his home seized to build the so-called Lost Liberty Inn [backgrounder]. The group has collected enough signatures for a ballot initiative [petition, PDF] on the issue that will be before Weare voters in March. A Supreme Court spokeswoman said Justice Souter had no comment on the issue. AP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

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.