Women declared “Persons” in Canada

On October 18, 1929, The Privy Council of the United Kingdom declared that women were considered “persons” under the laws of Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada had held in Edwards v. Canada that women were not considered “persons” under Canada’s governing law, the British North America Act. The Privy Council overturned this ruling, declaring “that the exclusion of women from all public offices is a relic of days more barbarous than ours. And to those who would ask why the word ‘persons’ should include females, the obvious answer is, why should it not?”

THIS DAY @ LAW

FDR proposed 'court-packing' plan

On February 5, 1937, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, frustrated with the US Supreme Court's treatment of some of his economic reforms, proposed a plan to add judges to that and other federal courts whenever a sitting judge reached the age of seventy but declined to retire. Critics accused Roosevelt of indulging in autocracy and "court-packing." Review the text of Roosevelt's "fireside chat" on the proposal from March 9, 1937. Roosevelt eventually dropped the initiative but was nonetheless able to fill seven vacancies on the Court over the next four years, achieving his goal indirectly.

Panamanian dictator Noriega indicted

On February 5, 1988, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was indicted on charges of drug smuggling and money laundering. The following year, he was extradited to the United States and later sentenced to 30 years in US federal prison. In 1999, the French government requested that Noriega be extradited to France, where he had been convicted of money laundering. In that same year, the government of Panama also requested the extradition of Noriega, as a result of his 1995 conviction in absentia on murder charges.