Supreme Court News

COLUMBUS, Ohio - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (AN'-toh-nihn skuh-LEE'-uh) 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.

FREDERICK, Md. - 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.

WASHINGTON - Apparently, no one told Sonia Sotomayor that Supreme Court justices are supposed to be circumspect, emerging from their marble palace mainly to dispense legal wisdom to law schools, judges' conferences and lawyers' meetings.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court said on Monday that it rejected an appeal by six American Indians in their long-running legal challenge of the Washington Redskins' name, which they find racially offensive.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal from a group of Native Americans who think the name of the NFL's Washington Redskins football team is offensive.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a student who complained that high school officials violated her constitutional rights when they turned off her microphone during her religion-tinged graduation speech.

WASHINGTON - John J. O'Connor III, the husband of retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, has died.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - John O'Connor, the husband of retired US Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor, died Wednesday in Arizona after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease, the US high court announced.

WASHINGTON - A man from Tajikistan seeking his freedom from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is challenging a practice among federal judges here who are short-circuiting the cases of some long-time detainees.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The U.S. Supreme Court has reinstated the death penalty against an Ohio man who killed and mutilated a man he met in a gay bar in 1985, rejecting a claim that his lawyers erred during the sentencing phase of his trial.

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

WASHINGTON - A seemingly divided Supreme Court wrestled Monday with whether teenagers can be locked away forever for their crimes. The question arose in two cases involving Florida men who are serving life prison terms with no chance of parole for crimes they committed as teenagers. Their lawyers argue that the sentences for people so young are cruel and unusual, in violation of the Constitution, because young people have greater capacity to change.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A deeply divided US Supreme Court opened hearings Monday into whether juveniles can be sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes that do not involve murder.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court justices appeared reluctant on Monday to make it unconstitutional for any juvenile who commits a crime other than murder to be sentenced to life in prison without possible release.

Washington - A sharply divided US Supreme Court on Monday debated whether to invalidate state laws that permit juveniles to be sentenced to life in prison without parole for nonhomicide crimes.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Supreme Court will Monday wrestle with the merits of convicting juveniles who have not committed murder to life in prison without the possibility of parole -- a fate shared by 109 US prisoners, almost all of whom are non-white.

COLUMBIA, S.C. - South Carolina's Supreme Court ruled Thursday that an ethics investigation into Gov. Mark Sanford's travel must be made public, clearing the way for lawmakers considering impeachment to review a report on the probe.

Washington - 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.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Two men wrongly imprisoned for life and a third still facing the death penalty argued before the Supreme Court Wednesday that their sentences were the result of judicial misconduct and negligence.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Lawyers for the sniper whose deadly 2002 shooting spree terrorized the US capital region urged the Supreme Court Wednesday to suspend his execution next week, arguing he had been badly represented.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed worried that allowing people to sue prosecutors who fabricate evidence to win convictions might chill other prosecutions — even if those prosecutors are doing their jobs correctly and honestly.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Two Republican lawmakers advising Ohio's Democratic governor on changes to the state's lethal injection process say it shouldn't be hard to fix the system.

WASHINGTON - He's a right-leaning New Jersey native with a lifelong love of the Phillies. She's a liberal New Yorker who grew up near Yankee Stadium. They're eying each other warily these days from opposite ends of the Supreme Court bench.

BERKELEY, Calif. - The California Supreme Court is set to hear arguments challenging a key section of a law aimed at protecting children from sexual predators.

WASHINGTON - Several Supreme Court justices seemed unsympathetic Monday to calls for the courts to get involved in reining in what investors are calling "excessive" fees on mutual funds, a popular investment vehicle for millions of Americans.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Supreme Court refused Monday to consider the case of a Yemeni detainee held at Guantanamo Bay despite a lower court order for his release.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday 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.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court turned away another appeal to stop the release of documents generated for sexual abuse lawsuits against priests in a Roman Catholic diocese in Connecticut.

Washington - The US Supreme Court has declined to decide whether the federal statute of limitations bars the prosecution of a former Ku Klux Klan (KKK) member accused of kidnapping and murdering two black teens in 1964.