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Supreme Court votes 6–3 to stay out of Massachusetts' fight over the Vietnam War

The state wanted its residents shielded from service in any conflict Congress had not declared; the justices declined to say whether it could.

The Supreme Court voted 6–3 on November 9, 1970, to stay out of the question of whether the Vietnam War was legal. Massachusetts had passed a law protecting its residents from being forced to fight in any military action Congress had not declared a war, and its attorney general asked the justices to let the state enforce it. Congress had never declared war in Vietnam, and the President was acting under the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964. By refusing the case, the Court left the war's legality with the political branches…

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More from November 9
1979

NORAD screens show a massive Soviet strike; satellite and radar checks find no attack

A test tape is running as though it were real, and the warnings reach two continuity of government bunkers and command posts around the world.
1967

The first Saturn V leaves Florida with no crew aboard; the shock rattles the control center ceiling

Ten months after the Apollo 1 fire, NASA flies every stage and the spacecraft together on the very first try.
1862

McClellan says farewell to his troops; Burnside takes the Army of the Potomac

The handover happens in front of the Claggett farmhouse in New Baltimore, Virginia, two days after Lincoln settled on a more aggressive general.
18871776 Club
Eleven days after King Kalākaua signs, Washington holds a legal claim to a coaling and repair station on the shallow lagoon Hawaiians call Wai Momi.
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Read the full November 9 edition →Everything that happened on November 9 →
More from Cold War America
1968

Apollo 7 lifts off from Cape Kennedy; America flies astronauts again

Twenty-one months after the Apollo 1 fire killed three astronauts on the pad, a Saturn IB carries three more into orbit.
1984

Sullivan steps outside Challenger; first American woman to walk in space

Over the next three and a half hours she and David Leestma pumped hydrazine into a mock satellite to prove orbiting spacecraft could be refueled.
1976

A thread-like shape appears under the electron microscope in Atlanta

CDC virologists Fred Murphy and Alyne Harrison get the first clear image of the virus killing hundreds in Sudan and Zaire.
1962

A U-2 camera finds Soviet missiles ninety miles from Florida

The film still has to be developed and read before Washington even knows what it has.
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