On This Day
1786 – Virginia enacts the Statute for Religious Freedom authored by Thomas Jefferson.
The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was drafted in 1777 (however it was not first introduced into the Virginia General Assembly until 1779)[1] by Thomas Jefferson in the city of Fredericksburg, Virginia. On January 16, 1786, the Assembly enacted the statute into the state’s law. The statute disestablished the Church of England in Virginia and guaranteed freedom of religion to people of all religious faiths, including Christians of all denominations, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus.[2][3][4] The statute was a notable precursor of the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Statute for Religious Freedom is one of only three accomplishments Jefferson instructed be put in his epitaph.[5]
Born On This Day
1930 – Mary Ann McMorrow, American lawyer and judge (d. 2013)
Mary Ann McMorrow (née Grohwin; January 16, 1930 – February 23, 2013)[1] was an Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice.
Career
Mary Ann Grohwin was born to Roman and Emily Grohwin and grew up in a Roman Catholic household on the northwest side of Chicago. She attended Rosary College, now known as Dominican University. She received her law degree at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and was admitted practice law in Illinois in 1953.[2][3]
She was employed by the law firm of Riordan & Linklater. She was appointed Assistant State’s Attorney of Cook County, assigned to the Criminal Division, and was the first woman to prosecute felony cases in Cook County. She was elected a Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County in 1976. By order of the Supreme Court of Illinois, McMorrow was assigned to the Illinois Appellate Court in 1985 and elected to that court in 1986. She was the first woman elected to serve as chairperson of the Executive Committee of the Appellate Court. She was elected to the Supreme Court of Illinois in 1992, the first woman to serve in its 173-year history. With her election as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Illinois in May 2002, she became the first woman to head any of the three branches of state government.[citation needed]
Awards
She was the 1991 recipient of the “Medal of Excellence” award from Loyola University Chicago School of Law’s Alumni Association. She also was awarded the Chicago Bar Association’s Justice John Paul Stevens Award and the 1996 The Fellows of the Illinois Bar Foundation award for Distinguished Service to Law and Society.
Mary Ann McMorrow was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State’s highest honor) by the Governor of Illinois in 2007 in the area of Government and Law.[4]
Retirement
Justice McMorrow retired from the bench on July 5, 2006.[5]
Association memberships
Chief Justice McMorrow was a member of the:
Illinois State Bar Association and Chicago Bar Associations
Women’s Bar Association of Illinois
American Inns of Court (Master Bencher)
American Judicature Society
National Association of Women Judges
Illinois Judges’ Association (Board of Directors)
Death
Justice McMorrow died,[where?] aged 83, from undisclosed causes. She was married to Emmett McMorrow; the couple had one child, a daughter, Mary Ann (born 1963).
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Word of the day
- rendition October 15, 2024Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 15, 2024 is: rendition • \ren-DISH-un\ • noun A rendition, simply put, is the act or result of rendering something. That thing may be a performance or interpretation, a depiction, or a translation. In US law, rendition refers to the surrender by a state of a fugitive to […]Merriam-Webster
wikimedia
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for October 15 October 15, 2024Picture of the day Purple sea urchin (Sphaerechinus granularis), Garajau Marine Nature Reserve, Madeira, Portugal
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for October 14 October 14, 2024Picture of the day Panorama of the Holy Trinity Church in Zinkiv, Khmelnytskyi Oblast, Ukraine
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