Supreme Court confirmation hearings are often dismissed as a kind of ritualized theater that reveals little about the judicial philosophy of nominees. But this stereotype is frequently wrong. From David Souter to John Roberts, many nominees have tended to reveal more of themselves than they expect. Judge Sonia Sotomayor may have been something of an exception. Like previous nominees, during her confirmation hearings she displayed some aspects of her judicial philosophy — but perhaps not all of ...

The first morning of the 2005 school year held more than the typical jitters for Toni Kay Scott. One moment, the seventh-grader, known as T.K., was stepping from her mom's Ford pickup to join friends in front of Redwood Middle School in Napa, Calif. Minutes later, the police officer assigned to watch arriving students was steering her toward the principal's office. Scott, an impish brunet with a tiny nostril stud, had violated Redwood's dress code. The code aimed to squelch ...

The Supreme Court solidly supports a woman's right to choose These cases come to us a decade after we held in Roe vs. Wade that the right of privacy, grounded in the concept of personal liberty guaranteed by the Constitution, encompasses a woman's right to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy. Legislative responses to the court's decision have required us on several occasions, and again today, to define the limits of a state's authority to regulate the performance of abortions. ...

The hand-to-hand combat over new rules limiting the power of public unions in Wisconsin didn't end when Governor Scott Walker signed them into law on March 11; it merely changed venues. The new law is headed for a challenge at the state's supreme court later this year. Which is why the election for the court's swing vote on April 5 turned into such a bloody proxy fight for special interests from around the country — as well as ...

I hope your boy gets raped in jail and killed." The words, angry and exasperated, from an anonymous caller, burn into the ears of Jackie Golden, grandmother of Andrew Golden. For a moment she is too shaken to speak. "I know people have been killed," she says, trembling from the venom. She knows it is widespread. But, she says, Andrew is still my grandson. The tough talk that Jackie Golden fears travels fast in an area like Jonesboro, Ark. The ...

No green light flared from a track-side tower; no warning whistle echoed down the line. But no trainman missed the signal. When the Supreme Court gave its approval last week to the merger of the Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads, it was clearing the track for the nation's entire rail system. It was giving railroad management permission to highball into the future. As Justice Abe Fortas read the 37-page opinion that put an end to ten years of ...

"Is this a joke?" a befuddled young woman asked as she stood outside the Supreme Court on the morning of Oct. 6. She was staring at members of the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church, who were wearing sweatshirts emblazoned with the church's website, godhatesfags.com. A 9-year-old boy, a grandson of Westboro founder Fred Phelps, stood as tall as his tiny body allowed, holding a "God Hates You" sign. But these churchgoers, who believe all Americans are hell-bound because ...

To say that God is everywhere in American life is as much a statement of fact as of faith. His name appears on every coin, on every dollar bill and in the vast majority of state constitutions. Schoolchildren pledge allegiance to one nation, under him. The President of the United States ends his speeches with a benediction. God bless America. In a country born of a pilgrim's dream, a country that exalts freedom of worship as a sacred right, perhaps ...

Gunmen opened fire on a military vehicle in Islamabad on Thursday, killing an army brigadier and a soldier, officials said. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in New York's State Supreme Court, was brought on behalf of former investors and seeks unspecified punitive damages and compensation. Beyond that, it offers a look at what the plaintiffs' attorneys say was once Madoff's multimillion-dollar empire and what is now his world in a federal prison in North Carolina. Among the allegations in the 264-page ...

Five men were convicted on Friday in Sydney, Australia, of trying to commit terrorist acts, court officials said. The guilty verdicts came after a jury deliberated for 23 days, according to a statement from the Supreme Court of New South Wales. The men -- Mohamed Ali Elomar, Abdul Rakib Hasan, Khaled Cheikho, Moustafa Cheikho and Mohammed Omar Jamal -- were found guilty of "conspiracy to do acts in preparation for a terrorist act or acts." The men will be sentenced ...