Supreme Court U S

The U.S. Supreme Court put elected judges on notice Monday that they must step aside from deciding cases involving big-money donors who helped them win their jobs. The decision comes after a decade in which corporate interests and trial lawyers have waged increasingly costly campaigns for 21 states' supreme court seats. Most are in the Great Lakes region or the South.

Joe Sullivan was 13 years old when he and two older boys broke into a home, where they robbed and raped an elderly woman. After a one-day trial in 1989, Sullivan was sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole. Terrance Graham was 16 when he and two others robbed a restaurant. When he was arrested again a year later for a home break-in, a Florida judge said he was incorrigible. In 2005, Graham received a life term with no parole. The two young convicts represent an American phenomenon, one the Supreme Court is set to reconsider in the fall term that opens Oct. 5. At issue is whether it is cruel and unusual punishment to imprison a minor until he or she dies when the crime does not involve murder.

Until last month, the strongest evidence in drug and drunk driving cases in courtrooms across the nation often was a piece of paper. A crime lab or Breathalyzer report would confirm that the defendant indeed had illegal drugs or a high level of alcohol in his or her system. But a Supreme Court decision has sent a jolt through that procedure. Now the prosecution must make a lab technician available to testify in person if the defendant demands it.

Could the government outlaw a hypothetical "Human Sacrifice Channel" on cable TV? That question became the focus of a Supreme Court argument Tuesday on the reach of the 1st Amendment and whether Congress can outlaw videos showing dogs fighting or other small animals being tortured and killed. Last year, a federal appeals court, citing freedom of speech, struck down a law against selling videos with scenes of animal cruelty. The law applied only to illegal acts of torturing or killing animals, not legal hunting or fishing.

The historic Voting Rights Act -- the 1965 law that ended a century of racial discrimination at the ballot box and gave blacks a political voice across the South -- survived a strong challenge at the Supreme Court on Monday as justices pulled back from a widely anticipated decision to strike down a key part of the law as outdated and unfair to today's South. Instead, the justices agreed to narrow the law's impact by allowing municipalities with a clean record to seek an exemption.

Harvard Law Dean Elena Kagan, President Obama's choice to represent his administration before the Supreme Court, told a key Republican senator Tuesday that she believed the government could hold suspected terrorists without trial as war prisoners. She echoed comments by Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. during his confirmation hearing last month.

"Hillary: The Movie" had little effect on last year's election campaign, but it could have a profound impact on a century of election laws that restrict corporations from promoting or attacking candidates for public office. The Supreme Court took up a case Tuesday involving the 90-minute documentary that attacked Hillary Rodham Clinton when she was running for president. The dispute focused on whether the government can limit the use of corporate money in political campaigns.

When Sonia Sotomayor goes before the Senate next month for her Supreme Court confirmation hearing, the questioning is likely to focus on her work as a civil rights advocate in the 1980s as much as on her nearly two decades on the federal bench. That is because she was a board member of a Puerto Rican advocacy group that sued to overturn New York City's civil service exams and to win more police and firefighter jobs for Latinos.

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor sidestepped questions on abortion, gun rights and gay rights Wednesday -- including whether a state could forbid aborting a 38-week-old fetus -- leaving both conservative and liberal activists troubled. Sotomayor, relying on her long judicial record, gave detailed explanations of her court decisions but steadfastly refused to engage Republicans who were interested in her views on abortion, the 2nd Amendment and same-sex marriage.

The Supreme Court served notice Friday it may make a far-reaching change in civil rights law this year and knock down a pair of long-standing rules that give special protections to minorities in the workplace and in the voting booth. The justices, after meeting privately, announced they had voted to hear two cases that concern the lingering role of race in American life. The cases could put the court on a collision course with the incoming Obama administration.