Torkelsen, who is in federal custody awaiting sentencing on an unrelated case, pleaded guilty to one count of perjury in connection with a 1999 declaration to a San Jose federal court, according to U.S. prosecutors in Philadelphia. He faces up to five years in prison on the charge, and is set to be sentenced on Aug. 5. An attorney for Torkelsen was not immediately available for comment.

Prosecutors said the law firms told courts and class members that Torkelsen was being paid as an independent expert but secretly paid him a share of the proceeds of the cases.

The offices of big-name law firms typically reflect a conservative corporate culture, right down to the traditional mahogany trim in partner suites.

But at the new offices of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge in Hartford, there won't be a bit of hardwood from endangered rain forests in sight.

The firm hopes it will become the first law firm in Connecticut to earn LEED certification for its effort to outfit its new quarters in the 20 Church St. tower in downtown Hartford with the latest green technology.

The firm is spending $4 million to renovate and furnish 28,000 square feet, most of it on the 20th floor of the 23-story structure informally known as the Stilts Building.

Some people say Detroit attorney Doyle O'Connor's refusal to approve the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative for the November 2006 election ballot was an act of courage.

Others call the decision by the former member of the Board of State Canvassers an act of defiance.

Either way, the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission has charged O'Connor with professional misconduct for failing to carry out his public duties -- the first time it has invoked the charge.

More than a dozen individuals and groups, including the Michigan Democratic Party and the League of Women Voters of Michigan, have urged the state Attorney Discipline Board to drop the charges. The board tries and disciplines lawyers for alleged misconduct.

"It's really an outrage," said state Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer. "If lawyers are going to be subjected to this kind of second-guessing for acts as a public official, why would any lawyer want to serve in public office? This is a political vendetta."

But the woman who filed the misconduct complaint, Owosso novelist Diane Carey, who circulated petitions for the civil rights initiative, said O'Connor violated state law and should be disbarred.

"He violated his sworn oath to ratify a petition that was legally collected by the people and deserved to be on the ballot," Carey said.

Voters passed the initiative in 2006, 58% to 42%. It banned race and gender affirmative action in university admissions and government and public school hiring and contracting.

Proposal 2 got onto the ballot, despite complaints that sponsors duped voters, especially blacks, into believing it promoted affirmative action. Supporters denied that.

The grievance commission, which investigates and prosecutes lawyers for alleged misconduct, said O'Connor refused at a July 2005 meeting to approve putting the measure on the ballot despite a state attorney general opinion that canvassers had no legal authority to look into petition fraud.

And then, in December 2005, despite a Michigan Court of Appeals order to certify the proposal, he abstained.

O'Connor said he thought he was abstaining on a motion to close debate. The next month, he voted to put the measure on the ballot.

"If lawyers can defy a court order they disagree with, then they undermine the judicial system," said Deputy Grievance Administrator Robert Edick. O'Connor stepped down from the board in 2006 under the threat of contempt charges by the court of appeals.

O'Connor, then a labor lawyer, now works as a state administrative law judge. "Rather than being prosecuted for professional misconduct, Doyle should be given an award for trying to ensure the integrity of the electoral process," said his lawyer, Kenneth Mogill of Lake Orion, who wants the discipline board to toss the charge.

Mukasey will ask the justices on March 25 to reinstate the conviction of would-be millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam on a charge that an appeals court threw out, Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said.

The 66-year-old Mukasey is a former federal judge who presided over high-profile terrorism trials in New York.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned just one of the nine counts on which Ressam was convicted for plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport around Jan. 1, 2000. The charge in question is carrying explosives during the commission of another serious crime.

The appeals court said the law required prosecutors to show the explosives were carried "in relation to" the felony, which in this case was lying on a Customs form.

Mukasey will urge the justices to reverse the appeals court, in part because the ruling could make it harder to prosecute terrorists. The government argues that the law means a defendant must be carrying the explosives at the same time as he commits another crime.

Ressam's lawyer, Tom Hillier, said Mukasey's involvement "doesn't change the question before the court."

"Same case, same facts," said Hillier, the federal public defender in Seattle. "Attorney General Mukasey has had a distinguished career as a federal judge and before that as a prosecutor. He'll do a great job. He knows his stuff."

Reno was on the winning end of the case in which she argued, in support of Maryland, that police can order passengers and drivers to get out of vehicles during traffic stops.

Griffin Bell did not fare as well when he took on a controversial case in the Carter administration. Bell argued unsuccessfully against letting an endangered fish, the tiny snail darter, stop a federal dam project.

Only about one-third of the court's cases this term have been decided. The most important cases often are announced in the final days in late June.

But of the 18 majority opinions handed down so far, eight justices have written at least two each; Justice Samuel Alito has written none.

Newer justices often take a little longer to churn out their work, but Alito's first opinion last term came in December for a unanimous court.

Alito's paltry output could be a result of nothing more than the wait for dissenters to file their opinions.

The more contentious rulings typically come later. Justices need time to read drafts of their colleagues' work and make changes based on the input. It is not known what opinions Alito is writing, but most of the easy cases from the term's early days have been decided.

This all could change next week when the justices return to the bench and are likely to issue decisions.

Alito has not been completely silent. He wrote dissenting opinions in two cases involving a judge's discretion to be lenient toward defendants in drug cases.

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit seeking to halt sales of the only "morning-after" contraceptive pill available in the United States without a prescription.

The suit was filed against U.S. health regulators over their decision to allow non-prescription sales of Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc's Plan B pill.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Barr were sued by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and other groups seeking to overturn the FDA decision.

The pill can reduce the risk of pregnancy when taken within three days of intercourse.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted the FDA's and Barr's motion to dismiss the suit, saying the plaintiffs had failed "to identify a single individual who has been harmed by Plan B's OTC (over-the-counter) availability," according to the ruling.

Backers of reproductive rights applauded the decision.

"They still don't have any evidence in terms of why they think it is harmful," said Janet Crepps, deputy director for domestic programs at the Center for Reproductive Rights. "This is the right decision for women."

Plan B was approved in 1999. The FDA broadened the approval in 2006 to allow sale to adults without a prescription.

The pills must be kept behind pharmacy counters and can be sold to girls under the age of 18 years only with a doctor's order.

They did not identify the people or companies concerned, but they said "the background is the number that has been rising for years of criminal complaints by the holders of patent rights in the run-up to CeBIT."

Police said they filled 68 boxes with gadgets, documents and advertising material. The gadgets included cell phones, navigation devices, electronic picture frames and flat-screen devices, a police statement said.

All the exhibitors who were searched cooperated, except one who was briefly taken to a police station, police said. Of 51 exhibitors affected, 24 were from mainland China, three from Hong Kong and 12 from Taiwan. Another nine were German, and one each were from Poland, the Netherlands and Korea.

The alleged patent violations largely concerned devices with MP3, MP4 or digital video broadcast functions, as well as DVD players and blank CDs and DVDs, police said.