After analyzing some of Sonia Sotomayor's opinions as an appellate judge, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has issued a report concluding that she is a cautious judge who is reluctant to rule too broadly in particular cases.

The report might blunt some of the GOP criticism of Sotomayor as potentially too much of an ideological activist to serve on the Supreme Court.

"Overall, Judge Sotomayor's opinions defy easy categorization along ideological lines," a pair of CRS attorneys wrote last week. They said "perhaps the most consistent characteristic of Judge Sotomayor's approach as an appellate judge could be described as an adherence to...the upholding of past judicial precedents." Also, Sotomayor's opinions "display her apparent dislike for the situations in which the court oversteps the role called for by the procedural posture of a case."

Don't be surprised if you hear Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee quote some of those lines during the next several weeks.

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sanda Day O'Connor has little patience for people who go around accusing judges of being activists.

Senate Republicans lately have been voicing concerns that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's much maligned comments about the virtues of being a "wise Latina" judge could mean she will bring a specific agenda to the bench -- despite a raft of Sotomayor's opinions suggesting otherwise.

"I don't think the public understands what's meant by it," O'Connor said during an interview this morning on NBC's "Today" show. "It's thrown around by many in the political field and I think that probably for most users of the term they're distinguishing between the role of a legislator and a judge and they say that a judge should not legislate. The problem is, of course, that at the appellate level -- and the Supreme Court is the top on the appellate level -- rulings of the court do become binding law, so it's a little hard to talk in terms of who's an activist."

In an interview this morning on NBC's "Today" show, retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is in for a bumpy ride in the Senate for the next several weeks.

It's a miserable process," said O'Connor, who was the first woman nominated to the court, and the first nominee whose Senate Judiciary confirmation hearing was televised. "I wish her well."

O'Connor said Sotomayor is in for "a lot of tough questioning by the committee."

O'Connor made it clear she is happy about the prospect of Sotomayor joining Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only other female justice ever to serve on the court.

"Well, of course I'm pleased that we will have another woman on the court," O'Connor said. "I do think its important not to just have one."

The Supreme Court today sidestepped a ruling on whether a 2006 congressional reauthorization of a major section of the Voting Rights Act was constitutional. Instead, the court ruled narrowly that the Texas utility district that brought the case is eligible to "bail out" of the section's requirements, as provided for under the law.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote the opinion for an eight-justice majority. Justice Clarence Thomas filed a 19-page dissent that ran longer than Roberts' 17-page opinion.

"Whether conditions continue to justify such legislation is a difficult constitutional question we do not answer today," Roberts wrote. "We conclude instead that the Voting Rights Act permits all political subdivisions, including the district in this case, to seek relief from its preclearance requirements."

Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, complained again today that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has not given the committee enough information to weigh her candidacy.

Sessions appeared to be laying the groundwork for possible concerted Republican procedural opposition to the July 13 start date for Sotomayor's confirmation hearing.

"We still haven't gotten a complete questionnaire," Sessions said at the committee's weekly markup session. He added, "We should not move forward, and I cannot support moving forward, with a nominee" who has not submitted all the materials lawmakers have sought.

As the confirmation hearings approach for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions thinks it's the right time to start talking about what conservatives believe is the role of the courts.

So he went to the Senate floor Wednesday to deliver the first of a planned series of floor speeches outlining that vision.

Sessions is going to deliver such speeches periodically while the nomination of Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is pending. But it remains to be seen whether his speeches will resonate with a public that, in polls, usually has trouble naming very many of the nine justices on the Supreme Court.

Sessions delivered the standard conservative argument about the judiciary -- that judges should confine themselves to interpreting laws rather than legislating from the bench. "Is the judiciary to be a modest one applying the policies that others have enacted, or can it, the judiciary, create new policies that a judge may desire or think is good?" he said.

In a speech today in Washington, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy said that a Supreme Court decision nullifying the preclearance requirements of the Voting Rights Act would be "conservative activism pure and simple."

As early as Thursday, the high court will hand down its decision in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder. In the case, a Texas utility district is arguing that it should be eligible to "bail out" of the requirement under Section 5 of the the law that certain states and localities have to preclear changes in their election procedures and rules with the Justice Department. The district is also arguing that Congress improperly reauthorized Section 5 in 2006.

In his prepared remarks for a speech at the University of the District of Columbia's law school, Leahy previewed a likely Democratic strategy in the event the court voids Section 5: Decry it as an activist move as a means of blunting Republican questions about whether Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor can be sufficiently impartial as a justice.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor defended her membership in private women's organization named Belizean Grove, in a letter Monday to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sotomayor wrote in response to a letter the GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent to her last week asking for supplemental information to her committee questionnaire.

"The organization does not invidiously discriminate on the basis of sex," Sotomayor wrote. "Men are involved in its activities -- they participate in trips, host events, and speak at functions -- but to the best of my knowledge, a man has never asked to be considered for membership. It is also my understanding that all interested individuals are duly considered by the membership committee. For these reasons, I do not believe that my membership in the Belizean Grove violates the Code of Judicial Conduct."

The Judicial Conference has told congressional appropriators that it needs $87 million less for fiscal year 2010 than previously thought.

In a letter Tuesday to the leaders of the Senate and House Appropriations subcommittees that write the relevant spending bill, Conference Secretary James C. Duff said that one reason for the lower figure is that increased revenue from bankruptcy fees will be bigger than previously projected.

Duff said that in May, the conference projected 1,417,200 bankruptcy filings by individuals and corporations for fiscal 2010, an increase of more than 30,000 filings from what it originally projected for its fiscal 2010 budget request. Now, the conference is projecting 1,500,500 filings for fiscal 2010.

California Democrat Dianne Feinstein said today that the Senate Judiciary Committee should start its confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor on July 13 as scheduled.

Feinstein, a senior Democrat on the panel, said at a committee hearing this morning that there was sufficient time before then to review Sotomayor's record.

"Delay for due diligence may be one thing. But delay for the sake of delay is another. And I've got to tell you, candidly, that's what I believe is going on. It's Machiavellian delay," Feinstein said. "It's the way to obfuscate. It's the way to prevent. And it's the way to hope and pray that something is going to surface that the other side can use to bombast this nominee."

The seven Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have asked Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor for more documents to supplement her committee questionnaire.

In a letter to Sotomayor today, the Republicans said that Sotomayor had incompletely answered some questions, and had failed to provide some of the requisite supporting documents.

Among other things, the Republicans wrote that they are concerned that Sotomayor did not provide any drafts, videos or summaries of "more than half" of the speeches and lectures she listed on the questionnaire.

"These are not little itty-bitty matters, they're important matters," Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the Judiciary Committee's ranking Republican, said on the Senate floor. "If we're going to move forward in a record-breaking time frame, the least we can expect is complete and full answers for these questions."

A House Judiciary Committee task force has recommended articles of impeachment against Texas federal district judge Samuel B. Kent. The committee is scheduled to vote on the articles on Wednesday.

The task force voted 10-0 Tuesday, in a rare show of bipartisan harmony among committee members, to recommend four articles of impeachment. Kent was convicted of obstruction of justice earlier this year for lying about unwanted sexual contact with two female subordinates.

"These acts of sexual assault and obstruction of justice are, as the judge who sentenced Mr. Kent to incarceration stated, 'a stain on the justice system itself,'" said California Democrat Adam B. Schiff, who led the task force. "Were the House of Representatives to sit idly by and allow Mr. Kent to continue to hold the office of U.S. District Judge while sitting in prison, and after committing such high crimes and misdemeanors, it would be a stain on the Congress as well."

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a longtime friend of the law enforcement community, is hosting an event this morning at which leading law enforcement figures will endorse Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court.

Biden is holding the event at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House with New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, Miami police chief John Timoney, and Joseph Cassilly, president of the National District Attorneys Association, and other law enforcement officials.

As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1980s and 1990s, Biden helped steer appropriations toward grant programs for state and local law enforcement officials. Sotomayor used to work for Morgenthau as an assistant D.A.

Meanwhile, the nominee continues her private meetings with senators on Capitol Hill today.

The Justice Department announced earlier this morning that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani has been transferred to New York to face criminal charges for his alleged role in the Aug. 7, 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya.

Ghailani, a Tanzanian, had been imprisioned at Guantanamo since September 2006. He was recently referred for criminal prosecution in the Southern District of New York, where he faces a March 2001 superseding indictment. The Justice Department said Ghailani is expected to make his initial appearance in Manhattan federal court later today.

The transfer comes as a debate rages in Congress over whether the administration should be allowed to move Guantanamo detainees into the United States.

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 today that a West Virginia Supreme Court justice should have recused himself from a case that involved his biggest benefactor.

The case, Caperton et al. v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., Inc., concerned whether West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Brent Benjamin should have been involved in a business case given that Massey's CEO, Don Blankenship, engineered massive financial contributions to Benjamin's election effort while the case was still heading to the West Virginia Supreme Court.

"We conclude that there is a serious risk of actual bias -- based on objective and reasonable perceptions -- when a person with a personal stake in a particular case had a significant and disproportionate influence in placing the judge on the case by raising funds or directing the judge's election campaign when the case was pending or imminent," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the court. Kennedy was joined by the court's liberal bloc of justices: John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

According to Maine Republican Susan Collins, Sonia Sotomayor's favorite Supreme Court justice is Benjamin Cardozo.

Collins posed the trivia question to Sotomayor during a private meeting today on Capitol Hill. Cardozo was nominated to the court by President Herbert Hoover. He served on the court from 1932 to 1938. Collins declined to say why Cardozo is Sotomayor's favorite.

Also today, the administration turned in Sotomayor's responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire.

Sotomayor told the committee that she was first contacted on April 27 by White House counsel Gregory Craig "with respect to the possibility of a future Supreme Court vacancy." NPR's Nina Totenberg broke the news on April 30 that Justice David H. Souter planned to retire from the court.

A California federal judge has dismissed a raft of lawsuits against telecommunications companies related to the Bush administration's warrantless electronic surveillance program.

Vaughn R. Walker, a district judge in the Northern District of California, threw out the lawsuits because of a provision in a 2008 law that conferred civil immunity on telecom companies who cooperated with the government surveillance.

"We're deeply disappointed in Judge Walker's ruling today," said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The retroactive immunity law unconstitutionally takes away Americans' claims arising out of the First and Fourth Amendments, violates the federal government's separation of powers as established in the Constitution, and robs innocent telecom customers of their rights without due process of law."

Virginia's Democratic senators announced today that they are recommending Virginia Supreme Court Justice Barbara M. Keenan for a seat on the 4th Circuit appeals court.

"Senator (Mark) Warner and I jointly recommended Justice Barbara Keenan to serve on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals based on her exceptional qualifications and comprehensive legal experience in the Commonwealth," Sen. Jim Webb said.

Keenan, 59, has served on the Virginia Supreme Court since 1991. Before that, she was a judge on the General District and Circuit Courts of Fairfax County and the Virginia Court of Appeals. She also has worked as an assistant prosecutor in Fairfax, Va., and as an attorney in private practice.

The White House has released an endorsement letter for Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court candidacy, signed by 45 of her former clerks.

"As former law clerks to Judge Sotomayor, each of us can attest to her intellectual prowess, extraordinary work ethic, and commitment to the rule of law," the former clerks wrote. They sent their letter to Senate leaders and to all 20 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sotomayor, a 2nd Circuit appeals court judge and former federal district judge, is scheduled to begin making courtesy calls to those lawmakers tomorrow.

"Judge Sotomayor is an extraordinary judge and an extraordinary woman," the former clerks wrote. "Her combination of intellect, integrity, and vast experience will make her an outstanding Supreme Court justice."