Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor earned a "well-qualified" rating from the American Bar Association on Tuesday as she prepared for Senate hearings next week.

The ABA committee that reviewed her qualifications came out with that unanimous rating of the federal appeals court judge and released it in a letter to White House lawyer Greg Craig.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to begin hearings Monday on President Barack Obama's choice to replace retired Justice David Souter.

Sotomayor has been rated twice before by the ABA — as a trial judge and appellate judge.

As a U.S. District Court nominee, she was deemed "qualified" by a substantial majority of the committee and "well qualified" by a minority. The last time the ABA reviewed Sotomayor's qualifications — when she was up for the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — a majority rated her "well qualified," but that was not unanimous.

For more than 50 years, the ABA has evaluated the credentials of nominees for the federal bench, though the nation's largest lawyers' group has no official role in the process. Supreme Court nominees get the most scrutiny.

"The American Bar Association's unanimous, well-qualified rating of Judge Sotomayor is further evidence of the outstanding experience she will bring to the Supreme Court," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"The ABA's rating — an evaluation of integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament — should eliminate the doubts of naysayers who have questioned Judge Sotomayor's disposition on the bench."

ABA ratings are "well-qualified," "qualified" and "not qualified." The committee's members interview hundreds of colleagues — confidentially — and scours pages of a nominee's writings before coming up with the rating.

"The ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary has completed its evaluation of the Honorable Sonia Sotomayor and is of the unanimous opinion that Judge Sotomayor is 'well-qualified' for appointment as an associate justice to the United States Supreme Court," said Kim J. Askew, the committee's head.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito also got unanimous a "well-qualified" rating from the ABA before their Senate hearings.

White House lawyer Harriet Miers, nominated to the high court by President George W. Bush, withdrew before the ABA released its rating.

The ABA had a rocky relationship with Bush. In 2001, Bush ended the ABA's preferential role in checking prospective judicial nominees and decided the administration would not give the group advance word on names under consideration.

Conservatives had been bitter ever since the ABA's mixed review of the qualifications of failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in the Reagan administration.

In March, the Obama administration asked the ABA to resume its historical role in evaluating judicial nominees.

A central Minnesota woman ordered to pay $1.92 million for illegally sharing copyright-protected music is asking a federal judge to reduce the damages she must pay or grant a new trial, while the recording industry is taking steps to make sure she doesn't share music again.

Last month, a federal jury ruled Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 32, willfully violated the copyrights on 24 songs, and that she must pay $80,000 per song. In documents filed Monday in U.S. District Court, attorney Kiwi Camara argued this amount is "grossly excessive."

Camara asked that the court either remove the statutory damages from the judgment, order that the damages be reduced to the statutory minimum — which would result in a total award of $18,000 — or grant a new trial altogether.

"The plaintiffs did not even attempt to offer evidence of their actual injuries, seeking, instead, an award of statutory damages entirely for purposes of punishment and deterrence," Camara wrote, adding that the $1.92 million figure "shocks the conscience and must be set aside."

He also wrote that civil penalties must relate to a defendant's own conduct and the injury she caused to the plaintiffs. Instead, he said, it seems the damages were awarded not because what Thomas-Rasset did, but because of "the widespread and generalized problem of illegal music downloading."

Camara wrote that if a new trial isn't ordered, Thomas-Rasset would appeal based on evidence he argued should not have been allowed at trial.

This case was the only one of more than 30,000 similar lawsuits to make it all the way to trial. The vast majority of people targeted by the music industry had settled for about $3,500 each. The recording industry has said it stopped filing such lawsuits last August and is instead working with Internet service providers to fight the worst offenders.

A U.S.-trained Pakistani scientist accused of helping al-Qaida has repeatedly interrupted her competency hearing to declare her innocence and insist she's not anti-American.

The outbursts came during a daylong hearing in federal court in Manhattan to decide whether 37-year-old Aafia Siddiqui is competent to stand trial.

She is charged with attempted murder and assault. The U.S. government says she grabbed a gun and fired at U.S. soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan last summer. She shouted in court Monday that she did not shoot anyone.

She also said she's not really against America and never was.

The outbursts came as psychologists testified whether she is fit for an October trial. The judge said he'll decide that later.

A U.S.-trained Pakistani scientist accused of helping al-Qaida and shooting at FBI agents in Afghanistan has been forced to appear in Manhattan court by a judge's order.

Aafia Siddiqui (ah-FEE'-uh see-DEE'-kee) kept her hands folded as she entered court Monday surrounded by marshal's deputies. When the judge said that she was presumed innocent, she shook her head in apparent disagreement.

U.S. District Judge Richard Berman said he would not rule on whether Siddiqui is competent to stand trial, but would hear the testimony of mental health experts.

Psychologists for both prosecutors and the defense say Siddiqui has claimed she saw some of her children in her cell. They say seemed especially disturbed by required strip searches.

Berman has entered a not guilty plea for her.

A woman accused of withholding cancer treatment from her autistic son by canceling appointments and not filling prescriptions pleaded not guilty Monday to an attempted murder charge in the boy's death.

Kristen LaBrie was ordered held on $15,000 cash bail during her arraignment Monday in Salem Superior Court. She did not speak during the brief hearing, except to enter the pleas to attempted murder, child endangerment and other charges.

LaBrie's son, Jeremy, had been diagnosed with leukemia in 2006. He was 9 when he died in March.

Prosecutors say LaBrie, 37, canceled appointments for chemotherapy treatment, did not fill at least half her son's prescriptions and tried to deceived doctors into believing she was giving the boy the proper care.

Her attorney, Kevin James, said Monday that LaBrie was a victim, had financial trouble and took care of the boy on her own.

LaBrie had earlier been charged with child endangerment; a grand jury returned the more serious indictment Friday.

After bitter wrangling, Africa's leaders agreed Friday to denounce the International Criminal Court and refuse to extradite Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, who has been indicted for crimes against humanity in Darfur.

The decision at the African Union summit says AU members "shall not cooperate" with the court in The Hague "in the arrest and transfer of President Omar al-Bashir of the Sudan to the ICC."

Sudan welcomed the move, and other Africans said it was a signal to the West that it shouldn't impose its ways on Africa. A human rights group said the decision was a gift to a dictator.

The 13th AU summit of heads of state, which concluded Friday in Sirte, Libya, also "expresses its preoccupation about the behavior of the ICC prosecutor" Luis Moreno Ocampo, whom African officials describe as too hard on Africans. The ICC has launched investigations into four cases since it was created seven years ago — all of them in Africa.

Sudan rejoiced at the AU's rebuttal of the ICC. "It's the confirmation of what we always said: The indictment is a political thing, not a legal thing," Foreign Minister El Samany El Wasila told The Associated Press just after the decision was made public.

El Wasila declined to comment on whether al-Bashir would now feel free to travel to the 30 African countries that are party to the ICC. "We don't even want to think about it anymore," he said of the international court.