While enjoying my morning coffee today, I found myself thinking back to a few vacations where coffee was served the traditional way – with grounds settling at the bottom of the cup. Though it added to the local experience, it also reminded me how much I appreciate the convenience of a coffee filter. This thought led me to explore the history of the coffee filter and the invention that changed how millions enjoy their daily coffee. As the coffee filter patent marks its 118th anniversary on July 8, 2026, it is a fitting time to look back at one of coffee culture’s most influential innovations and its inventor Melitta Bentz.
Born in 1873, Melitta Bentz lived in Dresden, Germany, with her husband and three children. While hosting a coffee gathering for friends, she became frustrated by the grounds in her cup and the bitter aftertaste they left behind. Determined to improve the brewing process, she began searching for a way to filter the grounds from the coffee.
At the time of Melitta Bentz, existing coffee filters were either too fine or had holes that were too large, allowing grounds to pass through into the coffee. Seeking a better solution, Melitta Bentz took blotting paper from her son’s exercise book. She then punched holes in a brass cup, lined it with the paper, and poured the coffee through it. This simple method effectively filtered out the grounds while preserving the coffee’s flavor.
Recognizing the value of her invention, Melitta Bentz filed a patent application for her coffee filter with the German Imperial Patent Office in June 1908. She described her invention as: “A coffee filter with a bottom that curves downward and has a drainage hole, and a loose-fitting filter screen.”
Melitta Pour Over Coffee. Photo by Flickr user Margaret Bourne. April 2, 2017. Used under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
The patent was granted by the Imperial Patent Office and published in the Patent Gazette (Patentblatt) on July 8, 1908, on page 1145. Seizing the opportunity, Melitta Bentz launched her business with her husband, Hugo Bentz, on December 15, 1908, to market the Melitta coffee filter. The company began with just 50 filters and used an unusual marketing approach for the time: her husband visited local shops to show how it worked and demonstrated the filter in storefronts.
Over time, Melitta Bentz built a successful business and continuously refined the coffee filter. In 1937, she patented the now-familiar cone-shaped paper filter designed for use with a porcelain dripper with the Patent Office of the German Reich (Reichspatentamt).
During the First World War, imports of goods declined, making both coffee and filter paper scarce. As a result, coffee substitutes such as “Muckefuck” became common in Germany. Despite these challenges, Melitta Bentz managed to keep her company afloat and guide it through this difficult period.
During the Second World War, the Melitta company was led in part by Melitta Bentz’s son Horst Bentz, who also joined the Protection Squadrons (Schutzstaffel – SS). The company was involved in production for the German war economy, manufacturing items such as cookware for the military as well as materials like ammunition belts and grenade casings.
Melitta Bentz died in 1950, but her invention continues to shape modern coffee culture. The company she founded remains active today.
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On a recent trip to Providence, Rhode Island, I had the opportunity to explore the Rhode Island State House. The Rhode Island State House is the seat of Rhode Island’s government and home to Rhode Island’s Royal Charter of 1663, which was granted 363 years ago this week.
The Rhode Island State House was built between 1895 and 1904. Like the U.S. Capitol, it has a central dome with the House of Representatives and Senate chambers on each side.
The interior of the dome at the Rhode Island State House. Photo by Sarah Friedman.
Rhode Island House of Representatives Chamber. Photo by Sarah Friedman.
The Rhode Island State House is also home to the Rhode Island State Library. The library is open to the public, and researchers can find a wealth of Rhode Island and United States legislative history materials there. The library’s ceiling is designed to look like the cover of a leather-bound book.
Rhode Island State Library. Photo by Sarah Friedman.
The State House has a small museum, the Royal Charter Museum, on the first floor, where visitors can learn about Rhode Island’s founding. The Royal Charter granted by King Charles II on July 8, 1663, is on display in the museum. The charter permitted colonial Rhode Islanders to govern themselves and guaranteed the freedom of religion, which was the principle upon which Roger Williams founded the colony in 1636.
First page of the Rhode Island Charter. Photo by Sarah Friedman.
A virtual tour of the Rhode Island State House is available on the Rhode Island Department of State’s website.
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July 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Keep an eye out for more posts like this one that celebrate the Declaration, the lives of its signers, and the world in which they lived.
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Today’s blog is a guest post by Senior Counsel of Legal Programs and Initiatives, Jeanne Dennis. Jeanne and her team work to expand access to the Constitution Annotated website and provide users with resources to better interpret and understand the Constitution.
While the Declaration of Independence is most famous for its soaring language, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” equally worthy of attention is its list of how King George III had established “an absolute Tyranny over these States.” These grievances not only provide a snapshot of the historical events that propelled the colonies to revolution, but they also raise questions about how to best secure those unalienable Rights so cherished by the Founding Fathers.
Eleven years after the Declaration of Independence was written, delegates from all but one state met in Philadelphia to resolve problems that had arisen under the Articles of Confederation. In drafting the Constitution, these delegates, many of whom had signed the Declaration of Independence, were informed by the events to which the grievances refer. They would use this knowledge to craft the Constitution, creating a new form of government—one that reflects the will of the people while protecting individual rights.
Examining the grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence, this new podcast series explores how and why the colonists believed King George III deprived them of fundamental rights—rights the colonists considered to be their birthright as Englishmen—and how the Constitution, in turn, protects these rights. From Grievance to Governance shows how the Declaration of Independence continues to influence daily life in America through principles embedded in the Constitution.
We hope you enjoy these podcasts and will let us know if there is any information that you found interesting! Happy listening!
July 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Keep an eye out for more posts like this one that celebrate the Declaration, the lives of its signers, and the world in which they lived.
Subscribe to In Custodia Legis – it’s free! – to receive interesting posts drawn from the Law Library of Congress’s vast collections and our staff’s expertise in U.S., foreign, and international law.
On June 30, 1926, the bill creating the U.S. Code was signed into law. The display includes the bill, H.R. 10000, from our collection of bills and resolutions. The bill holds the full text of the Code and, because it was so large, it needed to be printed in two volumes.
The display also includes House and Senate committee reports that provide insight into the bill’s legislative history. House Report No. 900, entitled “Code of the Laws of the United States of America,” was issued by the Committee on Revision of the Laws on April 16, 1926.Senate Report No. 832, entitled “Revision of the Laws,” was issued by the Select Committee on Revision of the Laws on May 10, 1926.
For contemporaneous discussion of the U.S. Code, the display contains the December 1926 issue of the American Bar Association Journal, which published an article entitled “Legal Status of the New Federal Code.”
Timeline poster for the U.S. Code at 100 display created by Bailey DeSimone.
Bailey DeSimone, Visual Information Specialist, helped us create a timeline poster for the display to show how the U.S. Code developed through the years. The timeline poster highlights the following events:
1866: Congress authorizes President Andrew Johnson “to appoint three persons, learned in the law, as commissioners, to revise, simplify, arrange, and consolidate all statutes of the United States, general and permanent in their nature.”
1874: Publication of the first edition of the Revised Statutes of 1873 (also sometimes referred to as the Revised Statutes of 1874).
1877: Congress authorizes the president to appoint a commissioner to prepare the second edition of the Revised Statutes of 1877.
Between 1920-1924: Congress introduces several bills to codify the federal statutes, but none pass.
1926: Rep. Roy G. Fitzgerald introduces H.R. 10000 in the House on Mar. 4, 1926. It passes the House on Apr. 19, 1926, and is delivered to the Senate, which sends it back to the House with amendments on June 25. The next day, the House agrees to the Senate’s amendments and the act is signed into law on June 30, 1926.
1934: The next main edition is published and subsequent main editions are published every six years.
2024: Latest edition of the U.S. Code is published.
The full display of materials related to the creation of the U.S. Code. Photo by Sarah Friedman.
The display can be found near the entrance to the reading room.
Items in the display include:
H.R. 10000, 69th Cong. (1926)
H.R. Rep. No. 69-900 (1926)
S. Rep. No. 69-832 (1926)
Frederic P. Lee & Middleton Beaman, Legal Status of the New Federal Code, 12 American Bar Association Journal 833 (1926).
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Today’s interview is with Shawn Nevers, the director of the Brigham Young University Law Library. Tomorrow, we will publish a post highlighting some of the Law Library’s collections related to the U.S. Code to celebrate its 100th anniversary.
Tell us a little about your educational and work background.
How did you develop an interest in studying the origins of the US Code?
I have always enjoyed teaching statutes in my legal research classes because I think they are not discussed as much as they should be in law school. About 10 years ago, I was working on a research problem that involved a statutory note in the United States Code. I became fascinated with statutory notes, and after reading everything I could about them, decided there was more to be said. Julie Graves Krishnaswami and I researched and wrote an article called “The Shadow Code: Statutory Notes in the United States Code.” During the research for that article, I found some very interesting nuggets about the origin of the United States Code that I wanted to pursue in a future article, which I am in the process of writing now.
What was life like for legal researchers before the US Code, and why was that system replaced?
The first official codification of U.S. law occurred in the 1870s with the Revised Statutes of 1874, but there was no plan to continuously update it. So, if researchers wanted to see the official version of the law, they would need to check the Revised Statutes and each subsequent volume of the Statutes at Large. This was impractical, and so many researchers turned to commercial publications such as Federal Statutes Annotated and United States Compiled Statutes Annotated, but there was no official code or compilation for researchers to use. The goal of the U.S. Code was to create such an official source that researchers could depend on.
Why do you consider June 30 to be the US Code’s birthday?
It is important to remember that the U.S. Code itself was not passed into law, which is what its creators hoped for. The compromise was that the Code would be prima facie evidence of the law that could still be rebutted by reference to a discrepancy in the Statutes at Large. Congress is still in the process of examining and passing individual titles of the Code into positive law 100 years later.
What are one or two interesting facts you learned during your research?
When there was opposition in the Senate to making the U.S. Code a positive law code and repealing all the underlying statutes, one proposal was to institute a “twilight zone” (p. 4) where the Code would be prima facie evidence of the law for one year. During the “twilight zone,” errors in the Code could be corrected, and then the Code would become positive law after one year passed. This proposal failed, but it would have eliminated many of the problems we deal with today regarding positive law codification.
While not something that I learned, during my research, I did get to hold the original document that sketched out the 50 title structure of the U.S. Code, as well as Representative Fitzgerald’s copy of the first edition of the U.S. Code. For a U.S. Code fanatic like me, that was pretty cool.
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Please join us on July 16, 2026, at 2:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) for our next foreign and comparative law webinar titled “Colonialization, Tikanga Māori, and an Unwritten Constitution: Understanding Aotearoa New Zealand’s Legal System.”
New Zealand’s constitution is not found in a single constitutional document; it is one of only six countries without a formal written constitution. Instead, the sources of New Zealand law reflect New Zealand’s history as a British colony, dominion, and independent nation, as well as the New Zealand Supreme Court’s acknowledgement in R v Ellis that tikanga Māori (Māori law and custom) is part of the common law of New Zealand. This webinar will discuss the sources of New Zealand law, the decision in R v Ellis, and the integration of tikanga teaching into a New Zealand undergraduate LLB.
This webinar will be presented by Theresa Buller. Theresa is the Kaitiaki Kaupapa/Subject Librarian for Law and Criminal Justice at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. She holds a B.A. in History from the University of Canterbury and an M.L.I.S. from Victoria University of Wellington.
To learn about other upcoming classes on domestic and foreign law topics, visit the Legal Research Institute. Please request ADA accommodations at least five business days in advance by contacting (202) 707-6362 or [email protected].
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The following is a guest post byArrington Crilly, a former intern with the Creative Digital Projects program of theLaw Library of Congress. She is an alumna ofUNC Greensboro, where she currently works and where she earned her B.A. in history and M.L.I.S.
Tobacco restriction is one topic that has drawn the attention and activism of the Yurok. The Chairman of the Yurok Tribe, Joseph L. James, is quoted as saying, “This ordinance seeks to eliminate exposure to dangerous secondhand cigarette smoke in all tribal spaces….” This move was applauded by the Health and Social Policy Institute as well as the CEO of the United Indian Health Services Tribal Public Health Program. This ordinance not only limits commercial tobacco use “near areas frequented by school-age children,” but it also introduced “[r]igorous regulations on litter aimed at reducing tobacco-related waste,” which reflects both health and ecological considerations in its legislation. Within the Tribal Code, the Yurok indicate several specific ordinances for tobacco use and restrictions “in specified indoor areas,” “specified outdoor areas,” with “[r]easonable distance” requirements, and “[o]ther requirements and prohibitions.” It is important to note that these prohibitions are for commercial use outside of “traditional tobacco use,” which is indicated in these ordinances and defined further in the tribal code.
Quiet waters–Yurok. c. 1923. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c36571
The Yurok have also been active regarding conserving natural resources, like the Heyhl-Keek ‘We-Roy (also called the Klamath River), whose path runs from Oregon into California. These efforts also align with legislation in the United States, whose national consideration for the conservation of fish and fisheries dates back to a joint resolution of Congress on February 9, 1871 (16 Stat. 593 [No. 22]) in which the position of Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries was established. This position would be appointed out of current government employees or civil officers, with no additional pay, but was required to have “proved scientific and practical acquaintance with the fishes of the coast.” Though this position and mission would eventually grow and evolve into the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as we know it today, their initial purpose was “to study why the nation’s food fishes were decreasing and recommend ways to reverse that decline.” It is important to note that there is a long legislative history between the United States and indigenous tribes concerning hunting, fishing, and access rights to rivers and wildlife on indigenous land, like 25 C.F.R. 258 (1978), which refers to the Klamath River, or President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order which established the Klamath Lake Reservation (Executive Order No. 8475; 5 Fed. Reg. 2541 (July 12, 1940).)
For additional reading related to the information in this blog, check out these blogs and collections.
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In recent posts on this blog, I wrote about two early American lawyers who argued that a theory of natural law should be at the heart of the nation’s legal education. Those posts focused on the writings of James Wilson, one of the giants of the founding era, andDavid Hoffman, a remarkably learned lawyer from Baltimore who established the University of Maryland’s first school of law. As I wrote in one of those posts, natural law is the idea that people have basic rights and obligations by nature. AsThomas Jeffersonwrote in theDeclaration of Independence, they are implanted in us by “nature and nature’s God.” That idea, which was discussed widely among the founders of the United States, was part of an ongoing thread in legal and political thought in the West that had its roots in antiquity; it was represented by several distinct branches of thought even in the 18th century when Jefferson crafted the Declaration’s language. Both Wilson and Hoffman relied heavily in their work on the major authors of the Protestant branch of the natural law tradition, among whom were figures such asHugo Grotius(1583–1645),Samuel von Pufendorf(1632–1694),Richard Cumberland(1631–1718), andJean Barbeyrac(1674–1744). In this post, I want to talk about another author that both Wilson and Hoffman relied on, one who exercised a broad influence on civic education in their time. That author is Thomas Rutherforth (1712-1771), theRegius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge Universityand Archdeacon of Essex who wroteInstitutes of Natural Law.
Title page of Thomas Rutherforth’s Institutes of Natural Law (Baltimore, 1832). Photo by Nathan Dorn.
Thomas Rutherforth was born on October 3, 1712. Son of the rector of Papworth Everard (a village in Cambridgeshire, England), he was educated at Huntingdon School and later St. John’s College, Cambridge. There, in 1740, he completed a Bachelor of Divinity, the degree sought by aspiring leaders in the Anglican Church. While he had undergone extensive theological training, he also took serious interest in science, so much so that he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1742. He published scientific as well as church-related writings during his career.
Rutherforth went on to earn a Doctor of Divinity and in 1745 was appointed Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, a position that was created by Henry VIII in 1540 to anchor theological instruction in that university; it was in Rutherforth’s time – and it remains today – one of the most prestigious academic appointments in theology in the United Kingdom. Rutherforth supported the latitudinarianism that was dominant in Church leadership, a movement that began in the 17th century and that viewed differences in non-essential matters of belief with lenience. (Knudson, p. 312.) But at the same time, he supported the state’s right to require clergy to subscribe to the church’s formal statements of creed and practice (the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion). (See generally, Rutherforth, 1766.)
Among the many subjects that he studied, Rutherforth wrote several books and pamphlets about moral philosophy. His position emphasized God’s promise to reward the practice of virtue, an idea that some of his contemporaries, John Wesley (1703-1791), the founder of Methodism, for example, believed contradicted the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith. (Rodell, pp. 1-78.) The British author and theologian Catherine Trotter Cockburn (1679-1749) took issue also with Rutherforth’s view that personal salvation can be a motive for virtue, a characterization that she found too transactional. (Broad, pp. 7-8.) Rutherforth presented this view most forcefully in An Essay on the Nature and Obligations of Virtue (Cambridge, 1744) arguing that practicing virtue is identical to self-interest because the actions that God has made man’s duty are also the actions that lead to human happiness, both on earth and in the afterlife.
The first page of text of Rutherforth’s Institutes of Natural Law (Baltimore, 1832). Photo by Nathan Dorn.
The choice to comment on Grotius’ work was in some ways obvious. It was the most influential treatise on the law of nature in Europe; originally published in Latin in 1625, it had by Rutherforth’s time been printed many times, appearing in several dozen distinct editions in multiple languages, a number that expands significantly when all the variant imprints are considered. The work is credited with establishing the modern study of international law, but it had also become the launching point for most discussions of the law of nature in the Protestant world. (Tuck, pp. 78-79.) Natural law arguments had also become, by the middle of the 18th century, a staple of the liberal arts education in the leading universities in England and Scotland, a trend that also extended to the colonial colleges in North America; they were widely offered as a background theory for the moral training of young men at that time. (Knudson, p. 312.)
Rutherforth’s book was firmly in the vein of popularizing natural law theory. It stripped away a lot of the citations to Roman law and to Classical authors that weighed down Grotius’ text; it added a large amount of reasoned argumentation. Rutherforth also added his own thoughts to Grotius’ moral theory, including the prospect that the practice of virtue leads to individual happiness and eternal salvation. (e.g., Rutherforth, 1754, p. 11-14.) The first volume of Rutherforth’s work follows contents covered especially in the first two books of Grotius’ De Jure, discussions of the nature of law, especially the difference between natural law and positive law, the subjects of rights and obligations, of property and its acquisition, of rights that a man has in his own person, of rights of parenthood, of oaths, promises and contracts, and others. While Rutherforth’s first volume considers these topics from the point of view of natural law — those obligations that apply to people even when they are not part of any state or society — his second volume addresses the constitution of a state and its justification, the laws of a state, and the natural law conventions that govern the interaction of states.
Page 254 of Rutherforth’s Institutes of Natural Law (Baltimore, 1832). In this chapter, Rutherforth discusses the nature and origin of civil society. Photo by Nathan Dorn
The Institutes was well-received, especially in America. After the first edition of 1754/1756, the book was published again in 1779 (Cambridge, UK), in 1799 (Philadelphia), and then in 1832 (Baltimore). It was among the books that James Madison recommended for the use of Congress in 1783; it was mentioned by Luther Martin in the Constitutional Convention of 1787; Alexander Hamilton mentioned it in Federalist 84 and in his “Defense of the Funding System;” his book was cited by some of the giants of the field of law in the early Republic, including James Kent, Henry Wheaton and Joseph Story. (This list with its specific citations–and more–can be found here: McDowell, p. 60.)
As it happens, the Institutes relates to some of the questions that Jefferson raised in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. As for a person’s right to life, Rutherforth argues that while one has a right to his life, this only extends to the power to do what is consistent with his duty. “No man,” he writes, “can have a right to manage his own person, or to dispose of it in such a manner, as will render him incapable of doing his duty.” (Rutherforth, 1832, p. 78.) He explains further that as for his life and limbs, “as they were given him to use … they are not his to abuse or dispose of.” (Rutherforth, 1832, p. 78.) Regarding personal liberty, Rutherforth holds that there is no such thing as a person who is a slave by nature. Human beings are by nature free. On the other hand, personal liberty, he writes, is alienable. One can sell oneself or one’s child into servitude (though not one’s neighbor, nor an enemy conquered in an unjust war), a state which he claims must be managed to respect the rights of both master and servant. (Rutherforth, 1832, pp. 238-245.) Rutherforth also acknowledges that natural law can justify acts of political resistance against tyrannical government, a notion critical to the Declaration. (Rutherforth, 1832, pp. 478-481.) The relation between subject and supreme governor, he writes, “is limited by the natural and revealed laws of God, by the laws of the national constitution, and by the ends of the union. [one] may, therefore, give them the name of governors, … likewise, give the people the name of subjects, even beyond these limitations, if he thinks proper, but still the former can only be called governors, and the latter can only be called subjects in words; for beyond these limitations the relation of governors and subjects ceases in right.” (Rutherford, 1832, p. 456.)
July 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Keep an eye out for more posts like this one that celebrate the Declaration, the lives of its signers, and the world in which they lived.
Gascoigne, J. (2004, September 23). Rutherforth, Thomas (1712–1771), moral philosopher. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 17 Jun. 2026, from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/
McDowell, Gary L. “The Limits of Natural Law: Thomas Rutherforth and the American Legal Tradition.” TheAmerican Journal of Jurisprudence 37, no. 1 (1992): pp. 57-81.
Rutherforth, Thomas. A Vindication of the Right of Protestant Churches to require the Clergy to Subscribe to an Established Confession of Faith and Doctrines, in a Charge Delivered at a Visitation in July 1766. Cambridge: printed by J. Bentham, printer to the University; for Messrs Thurlbourn and Woodyer in Cambridge; and sold by J. Beecroft, and Messrs Robinson and Roberts, C. Bathurst, and T. Cadell, London, 1766.
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In honor of the recent Juneteenth holiday, the Law Library of Congress would like to highlight one of our collections and its new name. The Slavery and the Judiciary collection provides digital access to more than one hundred books and manuscripts documenting issues related to slavery and the courts from 1740 to 1860. This collection includes trial transcripts, legal reports, and interpretations of notable court cases. The curation of the collection was inspired by Paul Finkelman’s 1985 publication, Slavery in the Courtroom: an Annotated Bibliography of American Cases. From the main page of the collection, visitors can also explore related resources across other divisions of the Library, like the web archive of the African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1824-1909 and selected collection highlights featured on various Library channels.
The Slavery and the Judiciary, 1740 to 1860 collection offers over 8,700 pages of digitized material from the Law Library and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, spanning a 120-year history. In digitizing these materials, we at the Law Library hope that this collections helps to bring new perspectives on important moments in civil rights legislative history to light.
For more
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