27 MAY--This Day in US Military History

1908 – Congress passes the “Second Dick Act,” one of a series of laws enacted between 1903 and 1916 that completely restructured the old “militia” into the modern “National Guard.”

This law requires the federal government to call forth the Guard in case of emergency before accepting any volunteers for military service. It also removed the previous nine month limitation on militia service, and stated that such service could take place “either within or without of the territory of the United States.” This last aspect of the law was critical, because it appeared to remove a major objection the Army had regarding the militia: inability to employ the militia outside of the U.S. borders. However, less than four years later this aspect of the law was overturned when the Judge Advocate General of the Army and the Attorney General of the United States both opined that employing militia outside the boundaries of the country violated the Constitution, which limited Congress’ power to call forth the militia to only three purposes: “to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.” It was only after World War I, when the entire National Guard had to be “drafted” into the Army as a quick and dirty way of getting the troops deployed to Europe, that the Congress in 1933 finally passed a new law giving every Guard member “dual status” in both the militia and as a federal reserve of the Army. In the latter capacity Guardsmen could be deployed overseas.

https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/05/27/may-27/