"Not many lawyers of color end up in the Supreme Court and most of those who do are in the area of civil rights litigation," said Robert Harris, who argued once before the court in his career as a lawyer for Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

"We don't have as many of those cases as we used to so clearly that opportunity is not there for many African-American lawyers," said Harris, who is black.

Although the Supreme Court does not keep racial breakdowns of lawyers who argue before the justices, records indicate that the first black to appear before the justices was J. Alexander Chiles in 1910.

Long before he became a judge, Thurgood Marshall regularly argued civil rights cases at the Supreme Court in the 1940s and 1950s. Marshall was a rarity in those years of segregation, a black lawyer in an otherwise white world.

Under President Lyndon Johnson, he was the first black to be solicitor general, the Justice Department's top Supreme Court lawyer. Since then, two other black men — Days and Wade McCree — have held that job.

Two black men, Marshall and Clarence Thomas, have been Supreme Court justices.

Several factors account for the dearth of minorities at the court: continuing problems in recruiting and retaining blacks and other minorities at the top law firms; the rise of a small group of lawyers who focus on Supreme Court cases; the decline in civil rights cases that make it to the high court; and the court's dwindling caseload.

"It breaks my heart. It's the minority pipeline, the dwindling caseload, all of these things," Days told The Associated Press.

Days said he, too, has trouble attracting black lawyers to his firm. He recounted how he lost out to a philanthropic foundation over the services of a former clerk for a Supreme Court justice.

Two recent studies point up the trends. Of 46 Washington law offices with more than 100 attorneys, 28 reported that less than 3 percent of their partners are black. Seven firms had no black partners, according to a report by Building a Better Legal Profession, a group of law students who compiled data provided by the firms.

Morrison & Foerster's Washington office, where Days works, has just two black partners, although that placed the firm fourth in the Washington rankings at 5.6 percent. Blacks are better represented among associates at these firms.

Two-thirds of minority lawyers leave their firms within the first four years of practice, generally too short a period in which to make partner, the American Bar Association has said.

Nationally, about 5 percent of law firm partners are black, a number that has crept higher over the past 30 years. Partners typically share in firms' profits or losses, while associates are employees.

At the same time, a fairly small circle of lawyers controls more and more of the court's caseload even as the number of cases the justices accept is going down, Georgetown University law professor Richard Lazarus argues in a study.

This "increasing domination is evidenced by the rising percentage of oral advocates appearing more than once within a single term, a feat most typically accomplished only by attorneys within the Solicitor General's Office," Lazarus said. The study will be published soon in the Georgetown University Law Journal.

A case in point is Carter Phillips, managing partner of the Sidley Austin firm's Washington office. Phillips has argued 54 cases at the court in his career, more than all but three lawyers who continue to practice. Next month he will argue two cases in one week.

With his 24th oral argument approaching, Days seems to be the only active black lawyer with a high number of cases before the Supreme Court, Lazarus said.

The rise of an elite corps of Supreme Court lawyers rankles others in the profession who say the court regulars solicit their clients once the justices decide to hear a case.

"It perpetuates a little club and denies a lot of lawyers the opportunity to present their case, and it is their case, to the highest court in the land," said Gary LaFayette, a black lawyer from San Francisco who won his only argument in 2002 on behalf of the Oakland Housing Authority.

Harris, who recently retired as a PG&E vice president, said his moment of glory at the court was "highly unusual and not likely to be repeated." He won the case in which the utility argued that it should not be forced to allow consumer groups to put messages in monthly billing envelopes.

Even more than 20 years ago, he said, "You can imagine that it was not a foregone conclusion that I, a young African-American lawyer, would argue the case."

A jury originally awarded $5 billion in 1994. A federal court later cut that amount in half, but it still was believed to be the largest punitive damages judgment of its kind in U.S. courts.

Much of the initial blame in the accident was placed on Capt. Joseph Hazelwood, whose alcohol abuse was found to have contributed to mistakes that let the ship to run aground. The company and the plaintiffs used different arguments when citing Hazelwood's actions, in efforts to boost their respective cases.

The issue was whether, based on past high court precedent limiting punitive awards, the judgment was too high. The company argues it should not have to pay any damages, and that the case has dragged on too long. Special maritime laws govern these kinds of disputes, and previous such cases will be important benchmarks when the justices grapple for a ruling.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said the company has deep financial pockets, and even a multibillion-dollar judgment amounts only to "barely more than three weeks of Exxon's net profits."

A Brazilian judge has extended a term of temporary custody for six people connected with Cisco, the US technology giant accused of tax fraud, and imprisoned a further three people accused of involvement in the alleged scheme.

Some 40 people were arrested on October 16 after a two-year investigation involving police, public prosecutors and tax authorities. A former president and three serving senior executives of Cisco in Brazil, including its president, were held for five days. The former president was among six people retained in custody after the initial period and is among those held again on Friday.

Authorities say Cisco and its agents constructed a complex system of real and phantom companies to avoid import duties and other taxes amounting to R$1.5bn over the past five years. Cisco said it did not believe its employees had acted inappropriately and was co-operating with investigations.

In addition to Cisco executives, those arrested included employees of Cisco's main distributor in Brazil and of companies based at a technology park in Brazil's north-east. Also arrested were customs agents and tax inspectors.

Brazil, which is considered a key emerging market for Cisco along with Russia, India and China, accounts for about 1 per cent of Cisco's overall business, according to the company.

Officials said that over the past five years about 50 tonnes of goods had been imported each month under the alleged scheme at a declared total value of $500m. They said initial estimates put the amount of tax evaded at about R$1.5bn.