Elena Kagan is speeding toward confirmation as the 112th Supreme Court justice, with Republicans showing little appetite for a long-shot filibuster attempt after sparring with her over abortion, gays in the military and other divisive issues.

"Solicitor General Kagan will be confirmed," Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., confidently predicted as the Senate Judiciary Committee wrapped up its examination of President Barack Obama's high court pick.

Barring an unexpected turn, Kagan will succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens and become the fourth female justice in the Supreme Court's history. It would be the first time that three of the court's nine justices were women.

Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Senate's No. 2 Republican, called a filibuster of Kagan "highly unlikely." And asked outright whether Kagan was going to win confirmation, another Judiciary Committee Republican, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, replied, "I assume she will be."

Kagan, 50, spent her last day before the committee Wednesday trying to reassure conservatives that she would be able to separate her personal and political views from a job as a justice on the ideologically split Supreme Court.

President Obama today called for a "practical, common sense" immigration system that will help the U.S. economy and maintain the steady flow of immigrants who have always enriched the United States.

"Such an approach demands accountability from everybody," Obama said during his first major immigration speech as president.

Obama said his administration has already taken record-setting actions to strengthen the border, and also urged Congress to approve "a pathway to legal status" for the 11 million or so illegal immigrants who are already here.

Speaking to lawmakers, academics, and community leaders gathered at American University, Obama stressed the contributions that immigrants have made and the discrimination they faced throughout U.S. history. "Immigrants have always helped to build and defend this country," Obama said.

Immigration has become "a source of fresh contention" in recent says because of new Arizona law that gives police greater authority to question people's citizenship, Obama said in his first major immigration speech as president. His administration is expected to file a lawsuit against Arizona, but the president did not discuss that plan.

The Supreme Court is staying out of a dispute between Nigerian families and Pfizer, Inc., over the drug maker's use of a new antibiotic on children during a deadly outbreak of meningitis in the mid-1990s.

The justices on Tuesday rejected the pharmaceutical giant's appeal of a court ruling that allowed the lawsuits filed by the Nigerians in U.S. courts to go forward. The families allege that Pfizer violated international law against involuntary medical experimentation when it tested the drug, Trovan. The company failed to get the informed consent of the children or their parents, or to tell them that the drug had not been approved for use in children, the lawsuits say.

The lawsuits say the two-week experiment on 200 sick children led to 11 deaths and left many others blind, paralyzed or brain-damaged. Pfizer denies all the allegations and claims the survival rate for children who took Trovan exceeded the survival rate of those who did not take part in the study.

At issue was whether the Nigerians can sue under the Alien Tort Statute, an 18th century law that allows foreigners to sue in U.S. courts over international law violations. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said they can.

Two conservative-driven decisions with potentially broad consequences will likely define the just-completed Supreme Court term: freeing corporations and unions to spend as much as they like in campaigns for Congress and president, and ruling that Americans have a right to a gun for self-defense wherever they live.

A key member of the five-justice majorities in both cases, and the author of the guns opinion, was Justice Samuel Alito. Though he has been on the court less than five years, Alito has had an outsize influence in firming up the court's conservative bloc.

His appointment to replace the more moderate Sandra Day O'Connor, more than any other choice in the last decade shows the importance of Supreme Court nominations. It also points up that Elena Kagan's nomination to take the place of the like-minded John Paul Stevens almost certainly will not have the same short-term impact as Alito has had.

The Supreme Court won't stop a lawsuit that accuses the Vatican of transferring a priest from city to city despite repeated accusations of sexual abuse.

The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from the Holy See, the legal name for the Vatican.

The Vatican wanted the federal courts to throw out the lawsuit that seeks to hold the Roman Catholic Church responsible for moving the Rev. Andrew Ronan from Ireland to Chicago to Portland despite the sex abuse accusations.

Sovereign immunity laws hold that a sovereign state — including the Vatican — is generally immune from lawsuits.

But lower federal courts have ruled in this case that there could be an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act that could affect the Vatican. A judge ruled there was enough of a connection between the Vatican and Ronan for him to be considered a Vatican employee under Oregon law, and that ruling was upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Sacramento.

According to court documents, Ronan began abusing boys in the mid-1950s as a priest in the Archdiocese of Armagh, Ireland. He was transferred to Chicago, where he admitted to abusing three boys at St. Philip's High School.

Ronan was later moved to St. Albert's Church in Portland, Ore., where he was accused of abusing the person who filed the lawsuit now under appeal. Ronan died in 1992.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday reaffirmed the limits on contributions that political parties can raise, and rejected a challenge by the Republican Party that the restrictions violated free-speech rights.

The justices sided with the Obama administration and affirmed a ruling that upheld the limits, a cornerstone of the 2002 federal campaign finance law designed to regulate the influence of money in politics.

Republican Party attorneys had sought to end the limits and cited the Supreme Court's ruling in January that corporations can spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress.

That decision has been denounced by President Barack Obama for turning loose a flood of special-interest money into the U.S. political system before the November congressional elections, when Democratic control of Congress is in jeopardy.

It also has provoked efforts by Democrats in Congress to adopt legislation to blunt the impact of the ruling and has become a major issue at the Senate confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan, who Obama has nominated to the Supreme Court.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is paying $755,000 to settle a lawsuit with a former staff lawyer who accused the agency of blocking his investigation of a prominent hedge fund.

The SEC settlement of Gary Aguirre's wrongful termination claim resolved a long-running controversy that prompted scrutiny in Congress and by the SEC inspector general. The settlement was announced Tuesday by the Government Accountability Project.

Aguirre was fired by the SEC in September 2005. He went public in 2006 with allegations of interference by SEC officials in the probe of Pequot Capital Management and improper deference to a Wall Street executive whom Aguirre wanted to interview. That prompted an investigation by Republican staff of the Senate Judiciary and Finance Committees.

The SEC initially took no enforcement action in the case, which was started in 2004 and closed in 2006. The agency reopened it in January 2009 after documents emerged in a divorce proceeding showing that Pequot began paying $2.1 million to a key witness in the case in mid-2007.

Last month, Pequot and its founder and chairman, Arthur Samberg, agreed to pay a total of $28 million to settle the SEC's charges of insider trading of Microsoft Corp. shares. The SEC alleged that the hedge fund traded Microsoft shares on confidential information provided by a former employee of the technology giant whom it later hired.

Pequot, whose core hedge fund was liquidated last year, and Samberg, a well-known money manager and philanthropist, neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing.

The $755,000 being paid to Aguirre represents his salary for four years and 10 months plus his attorneys' fees, according to the Government Accountability Project, a group that works with whistleblowers. The group said it may be the largest settlement of its kind.

Under terms of the settlement, which was approved by a judge at the federal Merit Systems Protection Board, Aguirre agreed to drop two related cases against the SEC.