Alabama removes 10 Commandments from courthouse

On August 28, 2003, the Supreme Court of Alabama removed a monument of the Biblical Ten Commandments from its courthouse rotunda. The monument had been installed on the orders of Chief Justice Roy Moore, triggering a federal lawsuit. In Glassroth v. Moore, the federal District Court for the Middle District of Alabama ordered Moore to remove the monument. This decision was upheld on appeal to the Eleventh Circuit. When Moore refused, he was removed from his post by the Supreme Court of Alabama.

THIS DAY @ LAW

First US life insurance company incorporated

On January 11, 1759, America's first life insurance company was incorporated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Corporation for Relief of Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of Presbyterian Ministers was established by Presbyterians to support the families of their ministers. In 1988, the company's name was changed to the Presbyterian Ministers' Fund. The company later became Covenant Life Insurance Company before being acquired by Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company in 2002. Read a history of the Presbyterian Ministers' Fund from the Pennsylvania Historical Society.

Treaty ended Anglo-American claims, courts in China

On January 11, 1943, the United States and Great Britain relinquished by treaty their extraterritorial claims in China. This abandonment effectively ended the jurisdiction of the extraterritorial United States Court for China (established 1906) and the British Supreme Court in China. Read more about the United States Court for China, which one scholar has called "probably the strangest federal tribunal ever constituted by Congress," in a short online history of the US Ninth Circuit.