"It will be imperative that he speak in strong, unambiguous terms as to his support for this court and for this court's arrest warrants," Richard Dicker, director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch, said Friday.

Without a tough message from Ban, the Sudanese government may get the idea they "can flout this court at will without facing repercussions from the leadership of the United Nations," Dicker said. "If that were to happen, it would make more difficult the prospect of justice for victims for absolutely horrific crimes."

The court came into being in July 2002, but Sudan is not among the 105 countries that have endorsed the 1998 Rome treaty that established it.

The Security Council referred the Darfur case — charging a cabinet minister and a janjaweed chief with crimes against humanity — to the court in 2005 in a resolution that required Sudan's government and all other parties in the conflict to cooperate. Sudan later agreed to set up its own investigation and a special court for Darfur.

In his speech Monday, Ban is expected to "urge all member states to do everything within their powers to assist the court in enforcing the outstanding warrants" in Darfur and to praise the court for becoming "a centerpiece of our system of international criminal justice," said associate U.N. spokesman Yves Sorokobi.

The conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region has claimed over 200,000 lives and uprooted 2.5 million people from their homes since violence erupted in early 2003 when rebels from the ethnic African majority took up arms against the Arab-dominated government. Critics accuse Sudan of retaliating by arming local Arab militias known as the janjaweed, and the government is blamed for widespread atrocities against civilians.

The court's meeting opened Friday with tough words from its president and its chief prosecutor on bringing charges against Ahmed Muhammed Harun, who was appointed Sudan's humanitarian affairs minister after his indictment was announced, and Ali Kushayb, a janjaweed leader.

"The arrest warrants and the obligation to enforce them will not go away," Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor, told the meeting.

Judge Philippe Kirsch, the court's president, noted the potential impact on the court's credibility because the warrants it issued in early May for the arrest and surrender of the two suspects have not yet been executed.

"Without arrests, there can be no trials. Without trials, victims will again be denied justice. The potential deterrent effect of the court will be reduced," Kirsch told the meeting.

Kirsch told the meeting that Ban's anticipated presence on Monday "reaffirms the importance of this special relationship" between the U.N. and the court, which is a tribunal of last resort for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

"The strength of support we receive during this meeting from the states and the United Nations, of course, strengthens the credibility of the court," Jurg Lauber, the court's chief of staff, told The Associated Press.

Sudan's U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, told the AP on Friday that because Sudan is not a party to the court, its jurisdiction does not apply and its prosecutor was making "impossible demands, acting on behalf of the enemies of the peace and stability in the country."

Mohamad said Sudan also "should not be subject to the politicization of the Security Council."

Will Sudan turn over the two people indicted by the court?

"We will never turn over our citizens to be tried abroad," Mohamad said. "If there are accusations against any of our citizens, the judiciary in Sudan is more than capable."

The state said Mississippi courts examined Hodges' claims and determined they lacked merit.

"Miller's commitment papers...clearly show that this was his first commitment," state Attorney General Jim Hood told the court.

Under prior Supreme Court rulings, defendants have to show that their lawyer was deficient and that the outcome probably would have been different with competent representation.

The court's nine justices on Wednesday are to hear the appeal of Guantanamo prisoners who say a 2006 law unconstitutionally denies them a meaningful way to challenge in court their detention at the U.S. Naval Base on Cuba.

The case is being watched by governments and human rights activists around the world, who say President George W. Bush has overreached his powers and trampled on rights in the war on terrorism he launched after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

"The rule-of-law, humanitarian and human rights principles at stake in this case are the very principles which the coalition of liberal democracies together seek to uphold and defend in the 'war on terror,'" British and European parliament members said in one of the many outside briefs urging the Supreme Court to rule in favor of the detainees.

The Bush administration told the court the Guantanamo prisoners receive fair treatment and a chance to make their case before a military tribunal, with a limited appeals court review. But it said the Constitution's "habeas corpus" rights for prisoners to seek a court review of their detention do not apply to foreigners held outside the country.

"The detainees now enjoy greater procedural protections and statutory rights to challenge their wartime detentions than any other captured enemy combatants in the history of war. Yet they claim an entitlement to more," the Justice Department said in its brief on the case.

"The lung cancer diagnosis in June came out of the blue," said Joe Santarone, a colleague and friend. "In his later years, Jim ran marathons. He smoked only for a while in the late 1970s, when he managed his grandfather's pub in the Northeast, Graham's Pub."

Mr. Graham was born in the Summerdale section of Northeast Philadelphia into a tight-knit family of six children. He graduated from Father Judge High School in 1971.

After he married Susan Weitzman in 1975, the couple moved to San Diego, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1985 from the University of California.

They moved to Jenkintown, and Mr. Graham earned a law degree in 1988 from Widener University. He then joined Marshall Dennehey. For years, he opened and managed offices for the firm in Western Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Ohio and Florida, a total of 18.

Since 2002, Mr. Graham had managed the Cherry Hill office with 100 employees and the Roseland office in North Jersey. The Philadelphia Business Journal reported that the firm, with 380 lawyers, was the fastest growing in the Philadelphia region in the 1990s.

For two decades, Marshall Dennehey handled general liability cases, such as truck accidents, for Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., which formerly published The Inquirer.

"My father was a generous, big-hearted man," said his son, Colin, a second lieutenant in the Marines stationed in Japan. "When I played rugby at Catholic University, at least twice a week he jumped in his car to drive to D.C. for games. Then he took the whole team of 25 guys out to dinner."

Mr. Graham was unpretentious and often gave anonymously to those in need. "He gave money to a homeless man in Center City, and then took him to a shoe store and bought him a nice pair of shoes," his son said.

"Literally hundreds of friends came to his funeral services," Santarone said. "I gave the eulogy, and it was the hardest closing I ever had to do."

In addition to his son and wife, Mr. Graham is survived by a daughter, Susan Graham, a brother, and four sisters.

A Funeral Mass was said Nov. 24. Donations may be sent to the Breathing Room Foundation, Box 287, Jenkintown, Pa. 19046.

Former National Football League Commissioner Paul Tagliabue has rejoined the law firm Covington & Burling LLP.

Tagliabue took up his post as senior counsel on Dec. 1, according to a statement the firm released Monday.

Tagliabue retired from the NFL in September 2006 and was succeeded by Roger Goodell. In the past year, he served on Georgetown University's board of directors and was chairman of State University of New York's Graduate Institute of International Relations and Commerce.

In his new role at Covington & Burling LLP, Tagliabue will serve in both the D.C. and New York offices and focus on communications and media, technology and international sectors. He will also continue to advise the NFL on business matters, the statement said.

Tagliabue was the NFL commissioner for 17 years. During that time, the league grew to 32 teams from 28, and more than 20 stadiums were constructed.

Before joining the NFL, Tagliabue worked for Covington & Burling for more than 24 years. During that time, he represented the NFL and served on the firm's management committee.

Covington & Burling LLP is the fourth largest firm in the Washington area based on the number of metro-area lawyers, according to Washington Business Journal research.

The company employs more than 335 lawyers in Washington and more than 650 lawyers total. It also has offices in London, New York, San Francisco, London and Brussels, Belgium.

Social networking Web sites can seem dedicated to the idea that nobody’s personal life is worth keeping private, but when it comes to Mark Zuckerberg — the founder of Facebook, one of the largest networks — Facebook disagrees.

Facebook tried last week to force the magazine 02138 to remove some unflattering documents about Mr. Zuckerberg from its Web site. But a federal judge turned down the company’s request for a court order to take down the material, according to the magazine’s lawyers.

The dispute stemmed from a lawsuit charging that in 2003 and 2004, as a student at Harvard, Mr. Zuckerberg stole the idea and some of the computer source code for Facebook from some fellow students. They were planning a networking site of their own and had hired Mr. Zuckerberg to help with the programming.

Their project fizzled, while Facebook made Mr. Zuckerberg a billionaire — at least on paper — at the age of 23.

02138, which refers to Harvard College’s ZIP code in Cambridge, Mass., and consists primarily of articles about Harvard and Harvard alumni, published an article last week about the genesis of Facebook and the resulting lawsuit. The piece is sympathetic to the plaintiffs’ account and questions the validity of Mr. Zuckerberg’s claims.

The article relied in part on documents submitted in the lawsuit, in Federal District Court in Boston, that were ordered sealed by the judge in the case, Douglas P. Woodlock. On its Web site, 02138 posted not only the article, but also the documents, which include Mr. Zuckerberg’s handwritten application for admission to Harvard and an excerpt from an online journal he kept as a student that contains biting comments about himself and others.

Luke O’Brien, the freelance reporter who wrote the article, said that he had done nothing wrong in obtaining the documents and that neither side in the lawsuit had improperly leaked them to him. He said he had obtained the papers in mid-September from the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, which considered a part of the case, where a clerk apparently made a mistake and let him read and copy sealed documents, along with those that were still supposed to be open to the public.

“There were a whole bunch of manila envelopes taped shut, clearly sealed, and I did not open those,” he said.

Some of the pages he copied were stamped “Confidential” or “Redacted.” Bom Kim, founder and editor of 02138, which is not affiliated with the university or its alumni association, said that gave him pause.

“We cleared it with our lawyers,” he said, who said that any order sealing the documents would apply only to the parties to the lawsuit. “We did wonder if they were under seal. But since we had obtained them legally, we got clearance.”

On Thursday, Facebook asked Judge Woodlock to order 02138 to strike the documents from its Web site. Lawyers for 02138 said that late Friday, the judge, in an oral ruling, turned down the request; Facebook and its lawyer refused to confirm or deny that account. Calls to the court went unanswered.

“We filed the motions to let the court know that its orders were being violated,” Facebook said in a statement Friday. “One reason the court ordered certain documents’ protection was to prevent exactly what has happened: misusing documents and taking documents out of context to sling mud.”