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Judge Sonia Sotomayor, already facing controversy for a 2001 speech on the virtue of having "a wise Latina" as a judge, made similar comments in a series of speeches released Thursday. She said the nation is "deeply confused" about the proper role of race and ethnic identity, and she maintained that her identity as a Latina shaped her life and her work in court. She hoped "a wise Latina" would reach a "better conclusion" than a white male, she said on several occasions.

The detectives crouched low, guns in hand, sweeping the crumbling apartments, moving cautiously from room to room, barking at the two prosecutors to stay back, to watch out. The lawyers were children of the city, raised in ethnic neighborhoods by families of modest means. But the poverty here in central Harlem startled them. Some of the abandoned buildings served as shooting galleries, places where drug addicts congregated. The air was rank, the threat of violence palpable.

From prisoners' rights to environmental protection, laws set by the West's powerful appeals court were overturned in 15 of the 16 cases reviewed this term by the U.S. Supreme Court. The reversals affect a broad range of civil rights and business practices challenged in the nine states and two Pacific territories covered by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

When John G. Roberts Jr. took over as chief justice at the Supreme Court four years ago, he sounded the same theme that President Obama did more recently. The court was too divided and too polarized, he said, and he proposed a type of judicial bipartisanship. He said he would seek a broader agreement among the justices, even if it sometimes meant deciding cases more narrowly.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday blocked an effort by major media companies to quash a technology that threatens their already deteriorating advertising business. Plaintiffs including CBS, Fox, NBC Universal, Turner, Viacom and Walt Disney had asked the justices to reverse a lower-court ruling that allowed Cablevision Systems Corp.

The Supreme Court signaled Monday that it might be ready to give corporations a free-speech right to spend their money to elect or defeat favored candidates. In an unusual order, the justices said they were putting off until next term a decision over whether a politically charged film -- in this instance, "Hillary: The Movie" -- could be regulated as a type of campaign ad.

The question dominating the hearing today and Wednesday for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor will not be whether she will win confirmation, but whether Senate Republicans can fix her in the public's mind as a biased judge unlikely to follow the law. The possibility of lively exchanges became clear Monday with the opening of the Sotomayor hearing, even as Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee acknowledged that President Obama's nominee was almost certain to win confirmation.

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor parried tough questions Tuesday from the Senate Judiciary Committee about how race and gender affect a judge's views on the law. Republicans focused on a single ruling from her 17 years on the federal bench involving a group of white firefighters claiming reverse discrimination. Legal experts said the exhaustive discussion of the New Haven, Conn.

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor proclaimed Tuesday that she would not let ethnic or gender biases influence her decisions on the court, during a grueling round of questioning from skeptical Republicans who vowed to pursue their tough examination of her record today. After watching Sotomayor fend off their best questions, opposing senators on the Judiciary Committee all but conceded that her confirmation was certain.

Frank Ricci -- the named plaintiff in a lawsuit that Republicans have made Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's albatross -- said at her confirmation hearing Thursday that "Americans have the right to go into our federal courts to have their cases judged based on the Constitution and our laws, not on politics or personal feelings." The white firefighter and 19 of his colleagues sued the city of New Haven, Conn.