Lawyers also will advocate for GM franchise owners, who are under increasing pressure to go out of business as the auto maker races to downsize in an effort to avoid a government-led bankruptcy.

GM's National Dealer Council retained the law firm of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP to help ensure dealers being forced to close get payouts they're owed from the auto maker, according to a memo sent to dealers.

The auto maker is looking to eliminate 2,600 dealers by 2010 as part of a recovery plan that aims to keep the company out of bankruptcy court by slashing costs and restructuring debt.

GM, which has said it expects minimal costs in reducing its dealer body, will inform dealers within the next two weeks whether they are among those marked to close.

Kilpatrick Stockton LLP, an Atlanta-based firm, confirmed in a statement that attorney Mark Levy had died.

"Mark Levy was well known and highly respected for his successful appearances before the Supreme Court of the United States," said Bill Dorris, the firm's co-managing partner.

Levy was a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice between 1993 and 1995 and served five years in the Solicitor General's office.

D.C. Police spokeswoman Helen Andrews said officers were called to an office building where the firm is located to investigate a shooting Thursday morning. Investigators believe it was a suicide.

Levy attended Yale University's law school with former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and more recently worked on fundraising for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, said Dennis Gingold, an attorney who was working with Levy on a case.

"I don't know anyone who isn't shocked by what just happened," Gingold said. "He was a good guy. He really was ... and professionally, he was first class."

During his career, Levy had argued 16 cases before the Supreme Court. At Kilpatrick Stockton, he served as counsel and chair of the firm's Supreme Court and appellate advocacy practice. Levy, who was married and has two children, lived in Bethesda, Md.

It is the second major race case heard by the justices after Barack Obama became the nation's first black president.

The justices seemed split along conservative and liberal lines in considering a provision applying to all or parts of 16 states, mostly in the South. It requires them to get federal government approval before changing their voting procedures.

Congress adopted the Voting Rights Act, an historic piece of U.S. civil rights legislation, to make it easier for millions of blacks and other minorities to exercise their right to vote.

Congress extended it in 2006 for 25 years, with then-President George W. Bush signing it into law.

Last week the justices considered whether race still can be used as a factor for job promotions and hirings, an issue that could affect millions of employers nationwide.

Opponents of the voting rights law argue that the protections for minority voters are no longer needed after more than 40 years of progress, and they cite Obama's election as evidence of how America has changed since 1965.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of Judge Andre Davis, a U.S. district judge in Baltimore, Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., pointedly read from a 2005 private opinion sent to the judge by the federal judiciary's Codes of Conduct Committee. Obama has nominated Davis to serve on the Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The conduct committee told Davis that his service as a board member of the Montana-based Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, or FREE, violated judicial conduct codes, and Davis quickly quit the board.

But Feingold, long a stickler for judicial ethics, asked Davis about his initial contention, in a 2005 letter to the conduct committee, that there was no difference between his participation in the group's seminars and his decision to join the board.

"It seems pretty clear to me that joining the board of an organization like FREE is actually a much more significant indication of your involvement with the organization and poses, in my mind, very different ethical questions," Feingold said. He asked Davis if he still didn't see the distinction.

"I absolutely see the difference now, Senator," Davis replied. "I did not see it back in spring of 2004, when I was invited and agreed to join the board."

A federal appeals court Tuesday revived a lawsuit alleging that a unit of Boeing Co. (BA) helped the Central Intelligence Agency seize terrorism suspects abroad and secretly transfer them to other countries for interrogation.

The ruling reinstates allegations by five men who claim that U.S. operatives - with support from Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a Boeing unit - abducted them and sent them to other countries where they were tortured. They allege that Jeppesen provided critical flight planning and logistical support to the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program. The men are seeking unspecified monetary damages from the company.

The Bush administration had intervened on behalf of Jeppesen and warned that allowing the lawsuit to go forward could threaten national security. The Obama administration has made the same arguments.

A federal trial judge dismissed the case last year, ruling that it could not proceed because the very subject matter of the lawsuit was a state secret. But on Tuesday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the trial judge was wrong to dismiss the case at such an early stage in the proceedings.

"According to the government's theory, the judiciary should effectively cordon off all secret government actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the CIA and its partners from the demands and limits of the law," 9th Circuit Judge Michael Daly Hawkins wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel.

Though it revived the lawsuit, the appeals court said the government could assert a state-secrets privilege to protect specific pieces of secret evidence in the case. The court sent the case back to the trial judge for further proceedings.

A Jeppesen spokesman said the company was reviewing the ruling and had no comment. The U.S. Justice Department also said it was reviewing the decision.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the plaintiffs, called the ruling historic.

"Our clients, who are among the hundreds of victims of torture under the Bush administration, have waited for years just to get a foot in the courthouse door," ACLU attorney Ben Wizner said. "Now, at long last, they will have their day in court."

That is the top recommendation in "Minor Crimes, Massive Waste: The Terrible Toll of America's Misdemeanor Courts," a report released Tuesday by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Researchers with the Defender Initiative at the Seattle University School of Law reviewed statistics and visited misdemeanor courts in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington state.

They reported that cases per public defender ranged from 360 a year in Benton County, Wash., and 380 in Seattle, both set limits, to 2,403 in Chicago, 2,502 in Utah and 18,720 in New Orleans.

The National Advisory Committee on Criminal Justice recommends a maximum of 400 cases a year per defender.

John Wesley Hall Jr., a lawyer from Little Rock, Ark., and president of the association, said he looked forward to presenting the findings to the House Judiciary Committee in a congressional hearing June 4.