WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A district court issued a preliminary injunction on Monday stopping federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research, in a slap to the Obama administration's new guidelines on the sensitive issue. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth granted the injunction because he found that the doctors who challenged the policy would likely succeed because U.S. law blocked federal funding of embryonic stem cell research if the embryos were destroyed. (more)

The Justice Department filed suit Tuesday against Arizona, charging that the state's new immigration law is unconstitutional and requesting a preliminary injunction to stop the legislation from taking effect. (more)

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, used his opening statement during Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearings in part to hit the nominee on restrictions she placed on military recruiter access while she was dean of Harvard Law School. “Her actions punished the military and demeaned our soldiers,” Sessions said. The Defense Department released 850 pages of documents earlier this month that indicate Kagan did not completely ban recruite... (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barring extraordinary circumstances, Solicitor General Elena Kagan should have a relatively smooth confirmation to the Supreme Court if nominated by President Barack Obama. The Senate will determine whether the 50-year-old Kagan will become the replacement for retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. And Democrats control the chamber with 59 votes, one short of what they would need to forestall any possibility of a nomination-killing filibuster. Seven Republicans voted for her nomination t... (more)

Nothing too exciting here — as you’ll see, she did it for purely political reasons — but it’s bound to have some on the left breathing into paper bags, which is reason enough to push it out there. (Remember, Diane Wood, who was passed over for Kagan, is esteemed by liberals as an abortion warrior.) Since we’re looking for any scrap of insight into Kagan’s thinking, however trivial or unrepresentative, how about this as a sign that she’ll try to join the conservative majority on the Court occasionally if ... (more)

Republicans are readying themselves for a fight over the upcoming Supreme Court nomination hearings, but appear to have already taken the filibuster option off the table: Conservative judicial activists say they won’t ask their Republican allies to go to the mat over President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens by pressing for the ultimate weapon in a court fight – a filibuster. Instead, they say the nomination of a Democrat to the court will be an opportunity to ... (more)

WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens says he "will surely" retire while President Barack Obama is still in office, giving the president the opportunity to maintain the high court's ideological balance. Stevens said in newspaper interviews on the Web Saturday that he will decide soon on the timing of his retirement, whether it will be this year or next. Stevens, the leader of the court's liberals, turns 90 this month and is the oldest justice. His departure would give Obama his second n... (more)

Like Orin, were I forced to make a prediction, I would predict that the individual mandate will survive judicial review. Federal courts have been quite reluctant to strike down federal statutes on enumerated powers grounds for quite some time, and the individual mandate is a larger and more consequential piece of legislation than those invalidated by the Rehnquist Court. But while I think judicial rejection of the mandate is unlikely, I hardly think the chances are as remote as Orin suggests. (more)

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has presented the rebuttal argument in Obama v. Supreme Court. Roberts's remarks Tuesday protested the timing of President Obama's State of the Union disapproval of the court's decision in a major campaign finance case. It has begun Round Two in what appears to be a growing inclination from the White House and Democrats in Congress to criticize the court's decisions. (more)

CBS legal correspondent Jan Crawford doesn’t go quite that far, but she gets pretty close when she admits at the end that Barack Obama “overstated” the impact of Citizens United v FEC. (more)