U.S. District Judge James Gwin in Cleveland issued a temporary restraining order forcing Madison County to follow Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's instructions. The county had said that, one the advice of its county prosecutor, it was not going to allow same-day voting during the six-day window that runs through Oct. 6.

It was the first of three court decisions involving an early voting window that has become a highly partisan battle.

Both Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign and the Republican National Committee have urged supporters in Ohio to use the early voting. But there are Republican-backed lawsuits against it.

The state GOP has filed a statewide challenge to the voting window in federal court in Columbus. A hearing was scheduled for Monday.

Two GOP-backed voters also have filed a lawsuit in the Ohio Supreme Court, which could rule Monday.

The two lawsuits argue that Ohio law requires voters to be registered for at least 30 days before they cast an absentee ballot. Republicans have said Ohio law doesn't allow same-day registration and voting, and have accused Brunner, a Democrat, of reading a partisan interpretation into law to benefit her own party.

The disputed voting window results from an overlap between Tuesday's beginning of absentee voting 35 days before Election Day, and the Oct. 6 end of voter registration period.

But two recent critiques of his opinion in the landmark decision guaranteeing people the right keep guns at home for self-defense are notable because they come from respected fellow conservative federal judges.

The judges, J. Harvie Wilkinson of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., and Richard Posner of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, take Scalia to task for engaging in the same sort of judicial activism he regularly disdains.

Wilkinson was interviewed by President Bush in 2005 for a Supreme Court vacancy. His article strongly suggests that the 5-4 decision in Heller v. District of Columbia would have come out differently if he had been chosen for the court. Bush's appointees to the high court, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, joined Scalia's opinion.

The district's elected government is trying to figure out how to maintain restrictions on gun possession in the wake of the court ruling that struck down its 32-year-old ban on handguns. The D.C. council voted this month to let residents own most semiautomatic pistols and eliminate a requirement that guns be stored unloaded or secured with trigger locks.

Congressional critics said the city did not go far enough. The House passed a bill, backed by the National Rifle Association, that broadens the rights of city residents to buy and own firearms. The Senate has yet to act.

Wilkinson said elected officials are in a better position to determine gun laws than the courts. He compared the gun case to Roe v. Wade, the abortion rights decision that conservatives consider among the court's worst.

"Heller represents a triumph for conservative lawyers. But it also represents a failure — the Court's failure to adhere to a conservative judicial methodology in reaching its decision," Wilkinson wrote in an article to be published next year in the Virginia Law Review. "In fact, Heller encourages Americans to do what conservative jurists warned for years they should not do: bypass the ballot and seek to press their political agenda in the courts."

The guns case was easily the most significant opinion Scalia has written in his 22 years on the court. Yet Wilkinson faults the justice for falling victim to the same criticism Scalia leveled in a scathing dissent in the court's 1992 decision that reaffirmed the right to an abortion.

The 4-1 decision dated Wednesday and released Thursday upholds a lower court ruling that sided with Jennifer Henn and her former employer, the Times-Tribune of Scranton.

Two former Lackawanna County commissioners sued Henn and the paper over a January 2004 story that said they were not cooperative in their appearances before the grand jury.

The Supreme Court said reporters cannot be forced to identify confidential sources — a protection granted by the state's Shield Law.

Grand jury proceedings are secret and state law bars prosecutors, court officials or jurors from discussing such investigations. Witnesses are not barred from discussing their testimony outside the courtroom.

Lackawanna County Judge Robert A. Mazzoni had ruled that the importance of grand jury secrecy outweighed the protections of the Shield Law, but a three-judge Superior Court panel determined that Mazzoni had carved out an improper exception to the law. The high court agreed with the panel.

A Harrison County jury awarded the damages to residents last year, after finding the chemical giant downplayed and lied about health threats at a former zinc smelting plant in Spelter.

The high court accepted DuPont's appeal of the verdicts, and of the circuit judge's order holding it liable for the conduct of the site's previous owner.

They've been combined with an appeal from the plaintiffs, who want more people compensated for private property cleanups.

The consolidated argument hearing has not been set.

Justice Robin Davis voted to refuse each of the appeals.

Gov. Joe Manchin had urged the justices to accept the case, citing its $196 million punitive damage award.

The full 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments Thursday as judges review a decision overturning Joe Nacchio's April 2007 conviction.

Prosecutors argued he sold $52 million worth of stock when he knew Denver-based Qwest Communications International Inc. was at risk while other investors did not.

In March, a three-judge panel of the appeals court ruled that the trial judge improperly barred testimony from a defense witness. Prosecutors sought a review by the full appeals court, which granted the request.

Still pending is a civil lawsuit the Securities and Exchange Commission filed against former Qwest executives, including Nacchio.