A Virginia appellate court ruled last week that a prison trampled on an inmate's constitutional rights by refusing to pay for the felon's sexual-reassignment surgery — a procedure costing about $20,000.
A federal appeals panel seemed uncomfortable Monday with the notion of prohibiting a state court from retrying a capital murder defendant whose first conviction was overturned because of prosecutorial misconduct.
The federal appeals court ruling last week finding President Obama abused his recess appointment powers harkened back to a vision of the Constitution that many thought long dead, and could upend decades of practice by Republicans and Democrats.
A Virginia judge has ordered the defendant in a capital murder case to be released unconditionally from custody as of Thursday at 5 p.m. unless a federal appeals court intervenes.
Yosemite officials have told 1,700 past visitors they may have been exposed to a rodent-borne disease already blamed for the deaths of two people who stayed at the park.
Conservative critics like to point out that the federal appeals court that just declared California's same-sex-marriage ban to be unconstitutional has its decisions overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court more often than other judicial circuits, a record that could prove predictive if the high court agrees to review the gay-marriage case on appeal.
It's no longer just the economy, stupid. Social issues such as gay marriage, abortion and religious freedom have elbowed their way back into the political debate in the 2012 presidential race.
The Supreme Court will decide whether telling a lie about yourself is a crime - if the lie claims military medals you didn't earn.
California's same-sex-marriage ban faces its next legal test Tuesday when the state's highest court attempts to shed light on whether the voter-approved measure's backers have legal authority to appeal the federal ruling that overturned Proposition 8.
