US bankruptcy judge grants final approval to United reorganization News
US bankruptcy judge grants final approval to United reorganization

[JURIST] US Bankruptcy Judge Eugene Wedoff [official profile] from the Northern District of Illinois signed off on the United Airlines [corporate website] reorganization plan [official website; UAL materials] Friday, in a move that will allow the airline to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy [JURIST news archive] by February 1. The plan was submitted [JURIST report] by United's parent company, UAL Corporation, in September and United is now on track to come out of the nation's longest airline bankruptcy after three years of restructuring. UAL has taken several cost-cutting measures while under reorganization, including severing its employees' pension plans [JURIST report]. Company officials said they are pleased with the outcome [press release]. 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.