The justices will likely hear oral arguments around the end of the year in the case of Edward Jerome Harbison, who was convicted in the 1983 beating death of an elderly woman in Chattanooga.

Federal appeals courts have taken different positions on the issue, making the case a good one for the court to resolve, the Bush administration said. The administration wants the justices to decide that federal law for indigent capital defendants does not extend taxpayer support to inmates' efforts to win clemency.

Separately, Harbison's execution is on hold after a federal judge ruled in September that Tennessee's three-drug lethal injection method amounted to cruel and unusual punishment because of the "substantial risk of unnecessary pain" to the inmate. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is now considering that case, following the high court's decision in April that upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection in Kentucky.

Harbison asked in 2006 to expand the responsibilities of his federal public defenders to also represent him in state clemency proceedings if he lost his court challenges.

Justice Department lawyers have argued against Harbison's request. "There is no constitutional right either to clemency itself or to counsel to pursue it," Justice Department lawyers said in the filing.

The 5-4 decision addresses a basic legal point, that courts can only hear cases when plaintiffs suffer actual injuries that are traceable to a defendant's conduct.

In the case before the court, APCC Services Inc. is trying to collect from Sprint Communications Co. and AT&T Inc. for coinless long-distance calls over the networks of Sprint and AT&T.

APCC provides billing and collection services on behalf of pay-phone service providers.

Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen Breyer said APCC may pursue the claim, even though it has promised to turn over any money from the lawsuit to pay-phone service providers.

A federal appeals court said the case could go forward because the pay-phone providers transferred the compensation claims to the collection agency and agreed to finance APCC's lawsuit. Breyer agreed, saying that for centuries, courts have found ways to allow those to whom compensation claims are assigned to bring suit.

In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts said APCC has "nothing to gain from their lawsuit" and that under settled legal principles, that fact required dismissal of their complaint. Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined the dissent.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that pay-phone companies that complained they hadn't been adequately compensated could sue long-distance carriers.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has used authority given to him by Congress in 2005 to ignore environmental and other laws and regulations to move forward with hundreds of miles of fencing in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.

The case rejected by the court involved a two-mile section of fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Naco, Ariz. The section has since been built.

"I am extremely disappointed in the court's decision," Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said. "This waiver will only prolong the department from addressing the real issue: their lack of a comprehensive border security plan."

Thompson chairs the House Homeland Security Committee. He and 13 other House democrats — including six other committee chairs — filed a brief in support of the environmentalists' appeal.

Earlier this year, Chertoff waived more than 30 laws and regulations in an effort to finish building 670 miles of fence along the southwest border. Administration officials have said that invoking the legal waivers — which Congress authorized in 1996 and 2005 laws — will cut through bureaucratic red tape and sidestep environmental laws that currently stand in the way of fence construction.

The justices have twice before reinstated the death sentence for Gary Bradford Cone, who was convicted of beating an elderly couple to death in Memphis during a robbery.

Cone acknowledged that he killed the couple, but said he was temporarily insane because of drugs and the stress of his wartime Vietnam experiences.

He argued that state and federal courts never considered his claims that the state withheld evidence of his drug use. A panel of the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that Cone's plea had no merit. The dissenting judge said Cone's claims were never fairly considered by either state or federal courts.

The appeals court had twice before issued rulings favorable to Cone, but was overruled each time by the Supreme Court.

Under a Wednesday ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, employers that contract an outside business to transmit text messages can't read them unless the worker agrees.

Users of text messaging services "have a reasonable expectation of privacy" in their messages stored on the service provider's network, Judge Kim Wardlaw wrote in the three-judge panel's unanimous opinion.

The ruling also lets employers access employee e-mails only if they are kept on an internal server.

The text message part of the ruling will affect more employers. According to analysts, the majority of U.S. companies pay outside parties to transmit their workers' text messages but most keep their workers' e-mail on internal servers.

Spc. Mario Lozano was accused in connection with the fatal shooting of Italian military intelligence agent Nicola Calipari, who had been driving to Baghdad airport after securing the release of kidnapped Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena. The journalist was wounded in the shooting at a checkpoint near Baghdad.

Lozano was being tried in absentia on charges of murder and attempted murder.

But the Court of Cassation in Rome on Thursday confirmed a lower court ruling last year that said Italy has no jurisdiction in the case, according to lawyers for the victim and for an Italian who was wounded in the shooting.

Sgrena lawyer Alessandro Gamberini did not rule out the possibility of taking the case to an international body, such as the International Court of Justice. But he said there probably "isn't much that can be done."

Calipari family lawyer Franco Coppi said the latest court ruling "leaves a bitter taste in the mouth" as it denied "the possibility of better understanding the dynamics of what happened, the how and the why of this death," according to the Italian news agency ANSA.