“Supreme Court Justices Turn to Ex-Clerks for Unusual Role; Former clerks tapped to make the arguments others have abandoned”: law.com’s Tony Mauro provides this report.

“Afghan Detainees Sent Home to Face Closed-Door Trials”: The Washington Post contains this front page article today.

And The New York Times on Saturday contained an article headlined “Guantanamo Judge Is Urged to Get On With Proceedings.”

“Don’t keep blocking judges: A Senate logjam holding up nominations for federal judgeships has started to break, as it should.” This editorial appeared Saturday in The Los Angeles Times.

“Administration Set to Use New Spy Program in U.S.; Congressional Critics Want More Assurances of Legality”: Saturday’s edition of The Washington Post contained this article.

“Former Ala. Governor Turns Tables on Justice Department; Siegelman Connects His Case to Accusations of Interference”: This article appears today in The Washington Post.

“In Searching for New Job, Gonzales Sees No Takers”: Today in The New York Times, Neil A. Lewis has an article that begins, “Alberto R. Gonzales, like many others recently unemployed, has discovered how difficult it can be to find a new job. Mr. Gonzales, the former attorney general, who was forced to resign last year, has been unable to interest law firms in adding his name to their roster, Washington lawyers and his associates said in recent interviews.”

“Justices to rule if child rape can merit execution; Relative who assaulted girl, 8, faces death penalty”: This article appears today in The Houston Chronicle.

“Court withdraws couple’s asylum eligibility”: Yesterday in The San Francisco Chronicle, Bob Egelko had an article that begins, “A federal appeals court withdrew its ruling Friday that declared a Fresno couple eligible for political asylum in the United States despite the husband’s background as a guard in a Cambodian prison where inmates were allegedly persecuted.”

Friday’s order of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit withdrew a ruling that the Ninth Circuit issued in August 2007.

“Cantero to leave state Supreme Court”: The Miami Herald yesterday contained an article that begins, “Raoul Cantero III, the first Cuban-American justice of the Florida Supreme Court, announced his resignation Friday, saying his daughter’s recent illness helped persuade him and his family to move closer to their relatives back home in Miami.”

And The Associated Press reports that “Florida’s first Cuban-American Supreme Court Justice, Cantero, to quit.”

In jurisprudence essays from Dahlia Lithwick available online at Slate: She has new essays entitled “Courting Change: Rethinking the Supreme Court press corps for a new era” and “Trend It, Don’t End It: Tracking the inscrutable social consensus on capital punishment for rapists.”

The second of those essays also appears in the April 21, 2008 issue of Newsweek bearing the headline “The Supreme Penalty for Rape: We are witnessing either a burgeoning new trend for executing rapists–or the last gasps of capital punishment.”

“Lawsuit challenges prosecutors’ immunity; The Supreme Court has been asked to rule where responsibility lies in instances of wrongful convictions”: David G. Savage has this article today in The Los Angeles Times.

“Court to consider death penalty for child rape”: James Vicini of Reuters provides this report.