Supreme Court News

SAN FRANCISCO - California's Supreme Court declared gay couples in the nation's biggest state can marry — a monumental but perhaps short-lived victory for the gay rights movement Thursday that was greeted with tears, hugs, kisses and at least one instant proposal of matrimony.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Retired U.S. Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor made a rare public appearance on Wednesday with emotional testimony in Congress in which she told how Alzheimer's disease had forced her to bring her husband to work with her.

WASHINGTON - Retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor took her family's private battle with Alzheimer's disease public Wednesday as she urged Congress to speed research and aid to fight the coming epidemic of the mind-destroying illness.

The US Supreme Court has affirmed a lower court ruling that multinational companies can be sued in a US court for allegedly aiding and abetting the former apartheid government in South Africa.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court tossed itself off a big case Monday.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Supreme Court Monday allowed a multi-billion dollar lawsuit to go forward against a group of top international corporations accused of aiding the apartheid-era South African government.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday from a Chinese man who sought asylum in the United States because his wife was forced to have an abortion under China's controversial family planning policy.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday granted a temporary reprieve to a death row inmate in Virginia to consider whether lower courts correctly weighed his claim that his lawyer did a poor job of representing him.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a federal magistrate may preside over jury selection in criminal cases, as long as the attorney for a defendant explicitly permits it.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court is meeting to issue opinions and announce whether it has accepted any new cases.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens says the euthanized Kentucky Derby horse Eight Belles probably died more humanely than death row prisoners do.

WASHINGTON - This could be the Supreme Court term, one court watcher joked recently, that Justice John Paul Stevens remembers he is a Republican.

JACKSON, Georgia (Reuters) - Georgia executed a convicted murderer on Tuesday, the first person to be put to death in the United States since the Supreme Court ended a de facto moratorium on capital punishment last month.

ATLANTA - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to block William Earl Lynd's execution, paving the way for him to become the first inmate in the nation to be put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that lethal injection is constitutional.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court has refused to block the execution of a prisoner in Georgia, clearing the last obstacle to the resumption of capital punishment in the U.S. after a 7-month pause.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Republican John McCain criticized Democratic rival Barack Obama for voting against John Roberts as U.S. chief justice, reaching out to the Christian right on one of their chief concerns: the proper role of judges in government.

WINSTON-SALEM, North Carolina (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Tuesday he would appoint judges in the mold of conservatives John Roberts, Samuel Alito and former Chief Justice William Rehnquist if he were elected in November.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Mildred Jeter Loving was a shy, unassuming black woman who never expected to make history when her landmark 1967 Supreme Court case ended the ban on interracial marriages in the United States.

Georgia is poised to become the first state in the nation to execute an inmate since the U.S. Supreme Court decided in September to review Kentucky inmates' claims that lethal injection is unconstitutional. The court ruled last month that Kentucky's method of executing inmates, also used by about three dozen other states, is constitutional.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Supreme Court ruled on Monday that all states can demand photo identification papers from voters, in a decision which could roil the US presidential race six months before the elections.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Justice Antonin Scalia, in an interview to be shown on Sunday, defended the U.S. Supreme Court ruling's that gave George W. Bush the presidency and said he was not trying to impose his personal views on abortion.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Republicans in the US Congress succeeded Wednesday in blocking a law aimed at overturning a Supreme Court decision that restricts women's ability to sue their employers for unequal pay.

Washington - Health insurance is a major issue under debate in the race for the presidency, but this week a controversial aspect of that business arrives at the US Supreme Court.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Supreme Court Tuesday began deliberations on an amendment to campaign finance laws aimed at easing the rules for Congress hopefuls who run against millionaire candidates.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Supreme Court Wednesday ruled that lethal injection was constitutional, in a landmark ruling set to pave the way for executions to resume in the country after a hiatus of over six months.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments on whether the rape of a child is punishable by death, a penalty which for the past 30 years has only been handed down on murder cases.