In today’s speech to the Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms Conference in Italy, American Bar Association House of Delegates Chair William C. Hubbard inspired lawyers to re-commit themselves to the hard work of protecting human rights and strengthening the rule of law.

Hubbard said, “Lawyers and human rights advocates struggle with crises old and new … against genocide and mass atrocities and their consequences. … We struggle against terrorism while seeking to protect due process for the accused. … We struggle to help the corporate sector make a positive impact on human rights and remedy conditions that compromise basic human dignity for workers. … We struggle to secure the human rights of women and girls and combat all forms of violence against women. … From wherever we come … lawyers speak the same language.  We defend liberty for all.  We pursue equal justice for the mighty and the lowly.  We share a mission and a common sense of purpose, and we have much work before us.”

Hubbard represented the ABA at today’s meeting at the request of association President Carolyn B. Lamm.  He presented his remarks to international lawyers and legal scholars convening in Rome to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

He stressed the essential connection between a country’s rule of law and its citizens’ daily quality of life.  

“The ABA has long endorsed the founding documents of modern human rights law and supported the international community in its efforts to extend basic legal protections to all people. …  In fact, the ABA regards the promotion of universal human rights and the rule of law as part of its core mission as an organization,” said Hubbard.

Hubbard outlined the ABA’s role in establishing three key entities to track human rights and rule of law around the world:  the ABA’s Center for Human Rights, the Rule of Law Initiative and the now independent World Justice Project with its ever-growing Rule of Law Index.

With nearly 400,000 members, the American Bar Association is the largest voluntary professional membership organization in the world.  As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law.

Follow the latest ABA news and updates at www.abanow.org.

A central figure in Pennsylvania's legislative corruption case — former lawmaker Mike Veon — is scheduled for sentencing in Harrisburg.

The former state House Democratic whip is to appear Friday before Dauphin Court Judge Richard Lewis.

Veon stands convicted of 14 counts of theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest, involving the illegal use of public resources for political campaigning. Veon was one of 25 people arrested in the investigation into alleged corruption among Democrats and Republicans in the Legislature.

The state attorney general's office is seeking a 12- to 17-year prison sentence for Veon.

Veon's lawyer says he will ask for a sentence that includes probation but no prison time.

The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that Florida can undertake beach-widening projects without paying beachfront property owners who lose exclusive access to the water.

The court, by an 8-0 vote, rejected a challenge by six homeowners in Florida's Panhandle who argued that a beach-widening project changed their oceanfront property into oceanview. Justice John Paul Stevens took no part in the case in which the court affirmed an earlier ruling.

Private property advocates had hoped the court would rule for the first time that a court decision can amount to a taking of property.

The court's four conservatives — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — were prepared to rule that way, even though the homeowners still would have lost in this case, Scalia said in his opinion for the court. But they lacked a fifth vote.

The Constitution requires governments to pay "just compensation" when they take private property for public use.

The city's former chief crane inspector apologized at his sentencing Wednesday for taking bribes to fake inspection and licensing exam results and said other inspectors didn't deserve the notoriety he brought them.

James Delayo was sentenced in Manhattan state Supreme Court to two to six years in prison for taking more than $10,000 in payoffs.

"I'd like to apologize to the city in general for letting them down ... and to my family especially and the Buildings Department who do a difficult job and don't get recognition," Delayo said.

Looking gaunt and often coughing, the 61-year-old Delayo commended other inspectors for the difficult and important work they do, saying, "They don't deserve the bad publicity I brought them."

The charges against Delayo — filed in 2008 — stemmed from a crackdown on corruption in the construction industry that began after two deadly crane collapses that killed nine people.

Justice Thomas Farber said imposing the sentence was difficult because of Delayo's work supervising the crane operations at ground zero after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

An anti-abortion protester arrested in 2007 had a First Amendment right to demonstrate on a sidewalk near the entrance the building that houses the Liberty Bell, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The decision overturns lower-court rulings that upheld the arrest of Christian evangelical leader Michael Marcavage. Marcavage, who lives in suburban Lansdowne, had been sentenced to a year's probation for refusing a National Park Service order to move to a nearby designated demonstration area.

The appeals court tossed the two charges on free-speech and procedural grounds. The three-judge panel said Marcavage caused no more of a disturbance than other people near the Liberty Bell entrance, including a cancer-survivors group and the drivers of horse-drawn carriages hawking their services.

Marcavage founded a group, Repent America, that opposes abortion, homosexuality and the teaching of evolution.

He has been arrested repeatedly during protests up and down the East Coast. He successfully challenged a 2004 arrest for picketing at a Philadelphia street festival for gays and lesbians, but a Massachusetts court last year upheld a disorderly conduct conviction based on his refusal to stop using a megaphone at Salem's famed Halloween celebration.

An appeals court has overturned the conviction of an east Texas man accused of grooming children as young as 5 to perform in sex shows at a small-town swingers club.

The 14th Court of Appeals in Houston on Thursday ordered a new trial for 43-year-old Patrick "Booger Red" Kelly. He was sentenced to life in prison two years ago after a jury found him guilty of engaging in organized criminal activity.

The three-judge panel agreed with Kelly's claim that he had not been allowed to present a proper defense.

Authorities alleged that Kelly was a member of the so-called Mineola Swinger's Club. They accused him of helping set up a "kindergarten" where children learned to dance provocatively. Kelly testified that he was innocent.

Chastened by heavy criticism from lawmakers, a grim-faced BP chief executive Tony Hayward said Thursday he was "deeply sorry" for his company's catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

"I understand the seriousness of the situation, the frustrations and fears that continue to be voiced," he told a House investigations subcommittee.

But before testifying, Hayward had to endure more than an hour of mostly unrelenting criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.

"We are not small people, but we wish to get our lives back," Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., the panel's chairman, told Hayward, throwing back at the oil giant comments made the day before by BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg — about how BP sympathized with the "small people" of the Gulf — and Hayward's earlier remark that he wanted his "life back."

In a sharp exchange, Stupak noted that over the past five years, 26 had died and 700 were injured in BP accidents — including the Gulf spill, a pipeline spill in Alaska and a refinery explosion in Texas. He asked Hayward whether the government should ban drilling by companies with such "poor safety records?"

Hayward insisted that safety had always been his top priority and "that is why I am so devastated with this accident." When he became CEO, Hayward said he would focus "like a laser" on safety, a phrase he repeated on Thursday.