US Supreme Court News Archives

Lawyers for Merck & Co have told the US Supreme Court that investors shouldn't have waited so long to sue the drug maker over warnings about the risks of its painkiller Vioxx.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to use a shareholder lawsuit against National Australia Bank Ltd.

This Jan. 9, 2009, file photo shows, from left, attorney Karen Torre with her client Frank Ricci, lead plaintiff in the " New Haven 20" firefighter reverse discrimination case, speaking to the media on the steps of the Federal Courthouse in New Haven, Conn.

Now they're the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court case. On Wednesday, the high court will take up a case that could affect coastal property rights, beach access and efforts to shore up storm-eroded shorelines across the United States.

Share + Nov 28, 2009 2:22 pm US/Central Click to enlarge 1 of 1 Judge Sonia Sotomayor , the first Hispanic justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, is sworn in with the Judicial Oath in the East Conference room of the Supreme Court on August 8, 2009.

HYPOCRISY COMES IN many forms, but none are more appalling than when rule makers try to dodge the very rules they create.

Success in any long-running campaign breeds complacency; first euphoria, then relief, later forgetfulness.

Fourteen years ago, I began my career as an appellate lawyer in a pro bono case, helping the Southern Poverty Law Center convince the United States Supreme Court to reinstate the civil rights conviction of a Tennessee judge who used his power to sexually assault and rape female court employees and litigants appearing before him.

Dozens of gun possession convictions statewide could be overturned in the coming months as state judges interpret a narrow US Supreme Court ruling that found Massachusetts routinely violated the constitutional rights of drug defendants.

If the past few years have shown the people of Alabama anything, it's that white-collar crime is terribly serious business, with terribly serious consequences.

U.S. Sen. Jon Tester is part of a group of lawmakers signing a brief supporting a gun rights case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

A new rule that allows Michigan Supreme Court justices to disqualify each other from cases has produced extraordinary reaction from the bench.

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court took a huge step toward joining nearly all nations on the globe when it banned teen executions.

Critics of Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four alleged Sept.

Gun and ammunition sales have spiked in the last year, and more attention is being placed on massacre type shootings, such as the recent events at Fort Hood in Texas.

The family of Terri Schiavo , the Florida woman who was artificially kept alive for 15 years, say they feel both heartbreak and vindication over the news this week that a Belgian man thought to be in a persistent vegetative state was fully conscious for two decades.

The BDN's recent series of stories on guns in Maine revealed, among other things, the chasm that lies between those who want to regulate gun ownership and use and those who believe gun ownership is as sacrosanct as the secret ballot and free speech.

Alan Milavetz remembers how his mother, "in typical Jewish-mother fashion," always urged him to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer when he grew up.

How do you feel about the Second Amendment? poplicks.com Attorney General Abbott leads coalition of 38 state attorneys general to defend the Second Amendment in brief filed with U.S. Supreme Court AUSTIN Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott took legal action to protect Texans' Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

On Sept. 15, Ohio tried - and failed - to execute Romell Broom. The two-hour ordeal made national headlines.

The United States Supreme Court this month heard arguments in a case that could decide whether a child who commits a crime should be sentenced in some circumstances to life without parole.

Like all petitioners to the U.S. Supreme Court, Death Row inmate Kevin Cooper has a very slim chance of the court hearing his decades-old murder case, according to legal experts.

A federal judge Tuesday ordered the City of New Haven to promote Frank Ricci and 13 fellow firefighters, ending a years-long freeze on advancement on the city's fire force.

Here are excerpts from editorials in newspapers in Florida: -- Nov. 23 South Florida Sun Sentinel, on charging juveniles as adults: Florida is ground zero for a question that the U.S. Supreme Court is pondering: Is it constitutional for judges to send children to prison for the rest of their lives for crimes other than murder? The case before the ...

A 32-year-old man accused of killing a priest when he was 14 years old will be tried as an adult.

Nebraska and 37 other states are supporting a challenge to Chicago's ban on handguns.

Defense attorneys representing a man accused of killing a Centerton teenager want the court to again address the issue of whether their client is mentally retarded.

Success in any long-running campaign breeds complacency; first euphoria, then relief, later forgetfulness.

Attorney General Jack Conway requested Monday that execution dates be set for three convicted murderers on Kentucky's death row, including one whose case questioned the use of lethal injection nationwide.

A criminal trial in civilian court for admitted Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is bound to be messy, expensive and fraught with pitfalls.

The man considered the father of lethal injection in the United States said it doesn't matter whether three fatal drugs are used or one - as his home state of Ohio has proposed - as long as the drug works efficiently.

A federal appeals court has overturned the conviction of a Wisconsin man barred from owning firearms because of his criminal record, ruling the lifetime prohibition may violate Americans' Second Amendment rights and calling into question the future of a 13-year old gun control law.

Today is Monday, November 30, the 334th day of 2009. There are 31 days left in the year.

Tim Eyman lost a round in court Friday over his effort to make state elections officials answer questions about their policy for making initiative-signers' names public.

Virginia Military Institute is defending itself against a lengthy investigation into accusations that the school's policies are sexist and hostile toward female cadets, a dozen years after women won the right to enroll.

Success in any long-running campaign breeds complacency; first euphoria, then relief, later forgetfulness.

Bloggers and other posters and pundits have devoted a great deal of effort and ink attacking the defense attorneys involved in the horrific criminal trials that have dominated local news over the last few months.

The attention-seeking parents of the Colorado "balloon boy" must not have had their thinking caps on last month when they told police their son was aboard a runaway hot air balloon.

A U.S. Supreme Court justice delivered a special speech at an annual Omaha event.

Michigan's ban on racial preferences in public university admissions and government hiring was in court again Tuesday, another step closer to its assumed destination: the doorstep of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Click here for a free download of the latest Adobe Flash Player. by STUART WATSON / NewsChannel 36 E-mail Stuart: SWatson@WCNC.com Posted on November 20, 2009 at 10:17 PM RALEIGH, N.C. -- When the North Carolina courts ordered a former death row inmate to be released, many Carolinians wanted to know one thing: "How can this happen?" How can an ...

State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal filed a formal petition on Monday asking the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on whether an appeals court wrongly upheld new Federal Aviation Administration flight plans.

A federal judge Friday ordered the Obama administration to free a long-held Guantanamo captive who fled his native Algeria years ago and kicked around Europe as a construction worker for a decade before his capture in Pakistan.

But is dishonesty really a crime? By Matthew McClearn One wonders how Conrad Black and Jeffrey Skilling would fare as cellmates.

Larry "Bill" Elliott died in Virginia's electric chair Tuesday night, nearly nine years after the murders that landed him on death row.

This is an undated family photo of former Coffee County Sheriff C.F. "Neil" Grantham holding his grandson Sean.

More than 150 years after the U.S. Supreme Court issued the notorious Dred Scott decision affirming slavery, a Maryland city unveiled a plaque Tuesday to educate visitors about the opinion and the local man who wrote it - and to quell a local controversy.

Amtrak riders passing through New London, Conn., can catch an odd sight in an otherwise picturesque New England setting: a fancy corporate center standing next to a street grid emptied of nearly all its buildings.

Gates: Pentagon to review internal policies A A Nov. 19: Defense Secretary Robert Gates announces a DOD review of procedures and policies in an effort to prevent incidents such as the shootings at Fort Hood from happening again.

The runners-up to Merriam-Webster's 2009 Word of the Year , with definitions from the publisher's collegiate dictionary and, when applicable, the news event or story that generated the interest in the word: - Emaciated : To cause to lose flesh so as to become very thin.

The commission Gov. Joe Manchin tasked with reforming West Virginia's judicial system came to a series of politically savvy suggestions in their report released this week.

This photo made Nov. 4, 2009, shows death row inmate Danielle Simpson. Simpson volunteered for execution and in recent weeks changed his mind and hoped the U.S. Supreme Court would spare him from a trip to the Texas death chamber Wednesday, Nov.

In 2006, long before there was an Obama administration determined to impose a command-and-control federal health care system, a young orthopedic surgeon walked into the Goldwater Institute here with an idea.

Michigan's ban against racial preferences in public university admissions and government hiring will be put to the test in a federal appeals court three years after voters had their say.

A group of black Connecticut firefighters hopes to block promotions for white firefighters who won a discrimination case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The District of Columbia has decided not to appeal a court ruling that found its police checkpoints in a high-crime neighborhood were unconstitutional.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 5:08 p.m. Read more: National , Politics , Defense of Marriage Act , U.S. Supreme Court , Congress , Marriage , Gay , Same Sex Marriage , DOMA BOSTON a ' Gay married couples suing the government over a federal law that doesn't recognize same-sex unions say there is "no legitimate or plausible" reason for having a ...

The Obama administration is opposing former Gov. Don Siegelman's appeal of his felony corruption conviction before the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that federal prosecutors presented enough evidence to prove bribery.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has said in a speech at Ohio State University the Constitution is best treated as an original document within the context of its historical creation, not as a text subject to modern reinterpretation.

More than 150 years after the U.S. Supreme Court issued the notorious Dred Scott decision affirming slavery, a Maryland city has erected a plaque to educate visitors about the decision and the local man who wrote it.

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The Supreme Court turned down an appeal from Alabama death row inmate Thomas Whisenhant, convicted of the rape and murder of 23-year-old Cheryl Payton in Theodore in 1976.

The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday refused to block the execution of a Maryland man who was convicted of gunning down a Northern Virginia couple to win the love of a former stripper.

White New Haven firefighters are seeking promotions after winning their discrimination lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court.

U.S. Supreme Court justices will not hear the case involving the Miami-Dade School Board and the ACLU over a book school officials banned from its shelves, CBS station WFOR-TV reports.

The Supreme Court today for the third time reversed the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and restored a death sentence for a California murderer who bludgeoned and killed a young woman in 1981 to steal a stereo from her house.

On Friday the Supreme Court of Canada will hear an appeal of Federal Court rulings that ordered the Harper government to bring Omar Khadr back to Canada.

After drug giant Pfizer Inc. announced that it was opening a new research center here, city officials aggressively moved to acquire surrounding land for an economic development project - triggering an epic fight over eminent domain that reached the U.S. Supreme Court and ended with residents being forced from their homes.

Defence Secretary Robert Gates has moved to block the release of photos of foreign detainees reportedly being abused in Iraq and Afghanistan by US captors, Politico, an online newspaper, reported Sunday.

The idea of life in prison suggests the condemned has absolutely no hope of redemption.

Does it seem like not so long ago that John Allen Muhammad - the D.C. Sniper - was terrorizing residents of the nation's capital? And does it seem as if the state of Virginia executed him with unusual speed - just six years from his sentencing to his death? If it seems that way to you, you're not alone.

A man has been imprisoned for 18 years for a murder he did not commit, a judge in Manhattan found Thursday morning.

Strong-arm, power politics - how long does it take self-proclaimed 'caring' folks to learn that such tactics cannot lead to their promised peaceful, loving utopia? New London, Connecticut, was ruled by a cadre of allegedly well-intentioned movers and shakers, the kind of people who believe that politics is a way to 'get things done.' This group of ...

Attention was drawn to Virginia this week with the execution of John Allen Muhammad, the state's 104th person to be executed since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976.

On June 24, 2004, New York's highest court held that the state's jury instructions were unconstitutional under the state constitution and that the constitutional defect in the existing statute could only be cured by passage of a new law by the legislature.

Eleven people are on death row for killing Pennsylvania law officers, either on duty or off duty.

Councilor Albert Vecchia injected a little controversy over recycling into what was otherwise something of a routine Town Council meeting Monday.

WASHINGTON The alleged 9/11 mastermind and four co-accused will be tried in a civilian court in New York just blocks from where Al-Qaeda hijackers crashed two airliners into the World Trade Center, the government announced Friday.

A U.S. District judge's lax oversight of more than $30 million tied to the late Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos is "curious," a federal appeals court said in an opinion issued Friday.

Ohio waded into uncharted territory Friday when it announced plans to switch from the usual three-drug cocktail used to execute inmates to a one-drug method that death penalty opponents praised as a step forward - albeit one that has apparently never been tried on prisoners.

The U.S. Supreme Court has been asked to delay Tuesday's scheduled execution of a Maryland man convicted of killing a northern Virginia couple to impress a former stripper with whom he was obsessed.

Now that drug giant Pfizer Inc. has announced plans to pull out of a Connecticut city where it played a role in an epic eminent domain fight, residents are questioning why the battle was ever waged.

Former evangelical pastor Ted Haggard says a well-attended prayer meeting at his home wasn't the start of a new church, but a sign of his resurrection three years after he was forced to resign amid a sex scandal.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration said Thursday it can comply with a court order to sharply reduce California's prison population if federal judges bypass the state Legislature and pre-empt state laws.

President Barack Obama's administration must announce any day where it will prosecute a number of Guantanamo detainees, including five men accused of planning the September 11, 2001 attacks.

A multimillion-dollar coal contract dispute that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court has again resulted in a ruling in favor of Massey Energy Co.

Washington Post staff writers offer a window into the art of obituary writing, the culture of death, and more about the end of the story.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday reinstated the death sentence of a man who was found guilty of killing a man he met at a gay bar in 1985.

One of the worst decisions in U.S. Supreme Court history is now linked with one of the worst economic development failures in history.

A case being decided by the U.S. Supreme Court might determine whether Tim Masters will be permitted to continue his lawsuit against the prosecutors who put him in prison.

Plans to bring a liquefied natural gas terminal to southern New Jersey are back on the table.

This October 2002 photo shows Terrance Graham, 15. Graham was given a life sentence without parole for armed robberies when he was 16 and 17.

Cuban native Yosvanis Valle, 34, was executed by lethal injection Tuesday for his role in the 1999 robbery-slaying of a 28-year-old drug dealer in Houston.

Larry Williams expected to wait 10 years to see the death sentence carried out for his daughter's killer.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the conviction of a Montgomery County man sentenced to die for shooting a woman and dumping her body in a lake so he could steal her red convertible.

It's now up to a federal judge in New Orleans to decide whether to put a challenge to campaign finance restrictions on a faster track to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a case that could set a national standard for the sentencing of juvenile criminals, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Monday in two Florida cases where the juveniles were sentenced to life without parole for non-murder crimes.

Skeptical U.S. Supreme Court justices asked Monday whether techniques for speed dating, training horses or choosing a jury should be eligible for patents as the high court struggled to decide what types of inventions should qualify for such protection from competition.

The U.S. Supreme Court has reinstated the death penalty against an Ohio man who strangled and stabbed to death a man he met in a gay bar in 1985.

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to block Tuesday's scheduled execution of sniper mastermind John Allen Muhammad.

The Peace Prize Committee of the Norwegian Nobel Institute has been informed of two pending criminal cases against the Committee's Peace Prize Laureate for 2009 - US President Barack Obama.

A court hearing is planned to determine when to release documents generated for sexual abuse lawsuits against priests in a Roman Catholic diocese in Connecticut.

Every once in a while society pauses to take stock, usually through the courts, to see if its actions measure up to "evolving standards of decency." The U.S. Supreme Court takes up the gauntlet Monday when it hears two Florida cases involving penalties handed out to juveniles.

A post-conviction petition from death row inmate Thomas E. Loden Jr. is among dozens of cases before the Mississippi Supreme Court during its November-December term.

The US Supreme Court is considering, for the third time, the case of a California man who was sentenced to die in 1982 for the brutal killing of a young woman.

City leaders can legally throw disruptive audience members out of public meetings and arrest them if they don't go, an appeals court ruled this week, settling a lawsuit filed seven years ago after gadfly Robert Norse gave the mayor a straight-armed Nazi salute, refused to leave when asked and was taken away in handcuffs.

From an article by Anya Litvak in the October 30, 2009 print edition of the Pittsburgh Business Times : On Nov.

This story from the Boston Globe , which is headlined "Death penalty foes rip Coakley for signing brief," highlights that the politics of the death penalty in Massachusetts in quite different than in other parts of the country.

Attorneys for a 19-year-old Indiana County man charged in the beating death of his girlfriend's 19-month-old son in 2008 say a psychologist's examination of their client proves he is mentally retarded and therefore ineligible for the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder.

I've written recently about how courts in New Jersey and Illinois have concluded that the Second Amendment poses no obstacle to local governments enacting stringent anti-gun laws.

The U.S. Supreme Court is taking a close look at a question individual investors have long asked about their mutual funds, but the courts have largely ignored: Why am I getting charged twice as much as big institutional clients? Sure enough, the money-management services that different classes of fund clients get aren't the same.

WILMINGTON, Del. - State prosecutors will ask the nation's highest court to restore the conviction and death sentence for a man accused of the 2005 rape and murder of a University of Delaware sophomore from White Plains.

The US Supreme Court on Wednesday took up the difficult issue of what to do about unscrupulous prosecutors willing to induce false testimony and hide exculpatory evidence to convict innocent defendants.

A southwestern Pennsylvania jury has decided against the death penalty for a former Pittsburgh man accused of fatally shooting two Ohio college students in 1999.

Yes, yes, says White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Congress has the power to make everyone buy health insurance.

The attorney for a Missouri man sentenced to death for a 1992 killing urged the state Supreme Court on Thursday to spare his client, saying he is mentally disabled.

Attorney General Jack Conway is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to suspend the Kentucky Supreme Court's recent ruling which loosened restrictions on where convicted sex offenders may live.

The University of Michigan has received a $10 million gift from a suburban Detroit developer and his wife toward the $102 million expansion of its law school .

The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed worried that allowing a bad prosecutor to be sued by a wrongfully convicted person might chill other prosecutions - even if they're doing their jobs correctly and honestly.

Attorneys for sniper John Allen Muhammad, mastermind of the terrifying 2002 Washington area shooting spree, asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to halt their client's execution, saying he was paranoid and delusional during his trial.

PHOENIX a ' One of the key attorneys fighting Arizona's employer-sanctions law is hoping the Obama administration keeps politics out of its legal opinions.

The New York Times has this effective piece , headlined "Court Declines Case of Klansmen in a 64 Slayings," and The BLT has this effective entry , headlined "Supreme Court Rejects 5th Circuit Plea in Kidnap Case," discussing the notable action from the Supreme Court in a high-profile criminal case.

Stunned and angry, national gay rights leaders Wednesday blamed scare-mongering ads - and President Barack Obama's lack of engagement - for a bitter election setback in Maine that could alter the dynamics for both sides in the gay-marriage debate.

One witness who saw 64-year-old Joe Collins being beaten over the head by a rifle-swinging assailant compared it to someone getting pummeled with an ax or a golf club.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal wants the states and local residents to have the power to fight high electricity rates, and that took him to Washington on Tuesday to argue his point before the United States Supreme Court .

Following a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in June that abruptly required crime-lab analysts to start testifying at criminal trials, Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller's office has co-authored a friend-of-the court brief asking that the decision be limited or even overturned.

New Albany - Officials in a southern Indiana city must decide whether to continue a legal fight against an adult book and movie store after a federal appeals court declined to reconsider an opinion allowing the shop to remain open.

Groups trying to overturn an Arizona law that prohibits employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants are encouraged that the U.S. Supreme Court has expressed an interest in their appeal.

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether Iowa prosecutors can be sued by two men whose convictions in the killing of a retired Council Bluffs police officer were set aside.

The Kentucky Supreme Court on Monday denied the state's request to suspend its recent ruling which loosened restrictions on where convicted sex offenders may live.

Attorneys for sniper mastermind John Allen Muhammad plan to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to stop next week's execution.

T.R. Knight From LATimes.com: On Aug. 17, 1915, Leo Frank, a Cornell-educated Jewish industrialist, was lynched just outside Atlanta.

The U.S. Supreme Court has left in place a judge's ruling that allowed prosecutors to charge a reputed Ku Klux Klansman with kidnapping more than 40 years after two black men were abducted and killed in rural Mississippi.

A U.S. appeals court ruled Monday that Syrian-born Canadian Maher Arar cannot sue the United States over his forced deportation to Syria after his arrest in New York as a suspected terrorist.

A federal appeals court has struck down an ordinance that created two types of buffer zones around medical facilities after a Christian legal group challenged the law on behalf of a nurse who protests abortions.

An Orleans Parish Juvenile Court judge wants the state Supreme Court to grant a jury trial for a 14-year-old charged with rape, saying that it is a fundamental right of anyone facing detention for longer than six months.

A state court has dismissed more than 600 lawsuits filed against Medtronic citing federal law.

In the court of law, it never really mattered whether Roland Carnaby was a spy , as he claimed just before police gunned him down along the highway following a high-speed chase.

The Kentucky attorney general's office has asked the state Supreme Court to delay enforcement of its Oct.

In signing the National Defense Authorization Act on Wednesday, President Obama has personally endorsed yet another attempt by the US government to conduct military-commission trials of terror suspects currently held at the Guantanamo detention camp.

Similar efforts have stalled with legal challenges and Supreme Court decisions. But supporters say that the Military Commissions Act of 2009 balances the demands of fairness and due process against a real-world need for flexibility when seeking to prosecute accused Al Qaeda leaders and supporters.