President Ford offered amnesty to Vietnam draft-evaders

On September 16, 1974, President Gerald Ford announced a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam War deserters and draft-evaders which would waive any charges provided they agreed to work two years in public service. A Presidential Clemency Board was created to administer the program – it finished its work in September 1975 after having disposed of 14, 514 cases.

Critics said the initiative did not go far enough, however, and noted that only about 19 percent of eligible persons even applied. Learn more about the conditional amnesty program from the Papers of Charles E. Goodell, the Washington lawyer who was Chairman of the PCB, now housed at the Ford Presidential Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

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.