“BP asks U.S. Supreme Court justice to block Gulf spill payments”: Lawrence Hurley of Reuters has this report.

“Polar Vision”: Linda Greenhouse has this essay online at The New York Times.

“Guantanamo lawyers spar over CIA ‘black site’ disclosures; Defense attorneys in the USS Cole trial want details of their client’s treatment while in CIA custody”: Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald has this report.

“Abortion doctors restrictions take root in South”: The Associated Press has this report.

“The Supreme Court’s Empty Defense of the Intellectually Disabled: States ignored a prior ruling outlawing executions — and the justices let them get away with it.” Law professor David R. Dow has this essay online at The New Republic.

“U.S. Seeks to Censor More of Memo That Approved Drone Strike on American”: Charlie Savage will have this article in Thursday’s edition of The New York Times.

“Chilling Effect: How the attacks on a University of Virginia law professor are bad for academia, and all of us.” Dahlia Lithwick has this jurisprudence essay online at Slate.

“After Halliburton, SCOTUS has another securities litigation puzzler”: Alison Frankel’s “On the Case” from Thomson Reuters News & Insight has this report.

“Battling Dissentals and Concurrals over Doffing and Donning on the 7th Circuit”: Josh Blackman has this thought-provoking post at his blog about an order denying rehearing en banc that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued today, and the opinions concurring in and dissenting from that order.

“9th Circuit rejects Brown’s prison oversight appeal”: Paige St. John of The Los Angeles Times has this news update.

Courthouse News Service has a report headlined “Procedural Slap Against Calif. in Prison-Reform Case.”

And at her “Trial Insider” blog, Pamela A. MacLean has a post titled “State Must Disclose Plan to End Court Oversight of Prisons.”

You can access today’s ruling of a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit at this link.

“Hatch concedes gay marriage will probably become legal in U.S.; Utah’s Republican senator doesn’t agree with same-sex marriage but believes the writing is on the wall”: The Salt Lake Tribune has this news update.

“Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturns ban on expert testimony about eyewitness identification”: The Associated Press has a report that begins, “Pennsylvania criminal defendants won the right to offer expert testimony about the reliability of eyewitness identification in a decision Wednesday by a divided state Supreme Court that overturned a 20-year prohibition against it.”

Today’s 4-to-2 ruling of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania consists of a majority opinion and two dissenting opinions (here and here).

A separate ruling that Pennsylvania’s highest court issued today gave state prosecutors more reason to celebrate. In that other case, the court ruled by a differently composed 4-to-2 margin that a defendant’s proposed expert testimony concerning the phenomenon of “false confessions” was not admissible. This ruling consisted of a majority opinion, two concurring opinions (here and here), and a dissenting opinion.

“Court upholds ‘First Amendment’ right to film police; Ruling is one of many nationwide supporting right to record police”: David Kravets of Ars Technica has this report today.

“Appeals courts denies BP’s request to keep claims payments on hold”: The Times-Picayune of New Orleans has a news update that begins, “A federal appeals court has denied BP’s request to keep business claims on hold while it appeals its Gulf of Mexico oil spill settlement to the Supreme Court. The oil giant said it will now ask the nation’s highest court to put a new stay on the payments.”

“Appellants * * * state that they have been harmed by the placement of ‘In God We Trust’ on currency”: Today; a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a per curiam opinion affirming the dismissal of this lawsuit in a case captioned Newdow v. Peterson.

“Amid Split on Bank Case, U.S. Seeks a Middle Path”: In today’s edition of The New York Times, Charlie Savage has an article that begins, “Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. faced a legal and bureaucratic dilemma this year: Obama administration officials could not agree about what he should tell the Supreme Court about a lawsuit in which American victims of terrorist attacks in Israel are suing Arab Bank, the largest financial institution in Jordan.”

You can view the federal government’s recently filed U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief at this link.

“Justices, in 2 Cases, Side With Law Enforcement Officials”: Adam Liptak has this article today in The New York Times.

“Holder Hints Reporter May Be Spared Jail in Leak”: In today’s edition of The New York Times, Charlie Savage has an article that begins, “Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. hinted Tuesday that the Justice Department might choose not to jail a New York Times reporter for defying a subpoena forcing him to discuss his confidential sources — even as the Obama administration continues to pursue the right to do so before the Supreme Court.”

“Justice Scalia: Sometimes right, often wrong, never in doubt; Antonin Scalia is a striving, conniving political animal, a man as well suited for a career in talk radio as he has been in the law.” Online at The Week, Andrew Cohen has this review of Bruce Allen Murphy‘s new book, “Scalia: A Court of One.”