Thursday is probably the Court's last session until October. The school rulings in cases affecting schools in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle leave public school systems with a limited arsenal to maintain racial diversity.

The court split, 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts announcing the court's judgment. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a dissent that was joined by the court's other three liberals.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion in which he said race may be a component of school district plans designed to achieve diversity.

He agreed with Roberts that the plans in Louisville and Seattle went too far. He said, however, that to the extent that Roberts' opinion could be interpreted as foreclosing the use of race in any circumstance, "I disagree with that reasoning."

The two school systems in Thursday's decisions employ slightly different methods of taking students' race into account when determining which school they would attend.

In the case involving the mentally ill killer in Texas, the court ruled 5-4 in the case of Scott Louis Panetti, who shot his in-laws to death 15 years ago in front of his wife and young daughter.

The convicted murderer says that he suffers from a severe documented illness that is the source of gross delusions. "This argument, we hold, should have been considered," said Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion.

Panetti's lawyers wanted the court to determine that people who cannot understand the connection between their crime and punishment because of mental illness may not be executed.

The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution bars "the execution of a person who is so lacking in rational understanding that he cannot comprehend that he is being put to death because of the crime he was convicted of committing," they said in court papers.

In a third case, the Court abandoned a 96-year-old ban on manufacturers and retailers setting price floors for products. In a 5-4 decision, the court said that agreements on minimum prices are legal if they promote competition.

The ruling means that accusations of minimum pricing pacts will be evaluated case by case. The Supreme Court declared in 1911 that minimum pricing agreements violate federal antitrust law.

Court personnel said it had been 60 years since justices had rejected an appeal petition and then reversed themselves and voted to hear the claim.

The switch may reflect frustration among the court's more liberal and centrist members over the Bush administration's handling of the Guantanamo issue, according to civil liberties lawyers who have been battling with the government.

Three years ago, the court ruled that the hundreds of prisoners at the U.S. military facility in southern Cuba were entitled to a hearing before a neutral judge to challenge the government's basis for holding them. In a rebuke to the high court, President Bush and the then-Republican-controlled Congress enacted a law to strip these "unlawful enemy combatants" of their right to be heard in the federal courts.

Friday's order may signal that a majority of the justices are prepared to rule that the Constitution's habeas corpus guarantee gives the Guantanamo detainees the right to go to court and contest the government's reason for holding them.

"The Supreme Court, along with the rest of the nation, should be sick and tired of what it's seeing in Guantanamo," said Matthew MacLean, an attorney for four Kuwaiti detainees at the prison. "It's anybody's guess what changed the Supreme Court's mind, but I hope the justices are seeing the discomfort that so many people in this country and abroad have with Guantanamo."

White House National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe reacted to the justices' announcement by saying: "We did not think that court review at this time was necessary, but we are confident in our legal position."

The prison may be closed before the court acts. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has said he would like to move the detainees to another location, and congressional Democrats have threatened to cut off funding for the current facility.

Despite years of legal skirmishing, little progress has been made in establishing a system for deciding who is a dangerous foreign fighter who should be held prisoner.

Although former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld once described the Guantanamo prisoners as the "worst of the worst," many of them have been released.

Since terrorism suspects were first brought to Guantanamo five years ago, the Bush administration has argued that foreign fighters who are not part of a regular army have no rights in American law and also are not prisoners of war entitled to rights under the Geneva Convention.

However, in response to the high court's 2004 ruling, the Pentagon did agree to review the status of each prisoner held at Guantanamo.

During a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, three military officers examine the evidence. The detainee does not have a lawyer.

Last week, an Army lawyer who has participated in several such hearings questioned their fairness. Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham filed a sworn statement in one appeal before the Supreme Court that said officers were pressured to rule in favor of keeping the detainees in prison as "enemy combatants."

"I certainly think the Abraham declaration proves what everyone has long surmised, that the CSRT process is just a kangaroo court that doesn't provide any meaningful review," said David Cynamon, the lead attorney in one of the cases the high court will consider, Al Odah vs. Bush. "It seems to be the straw that broke the camel's back."

Cynamon's client, a Kuwaiti named Fawzi Al Odah, has been held for six years with no charges filed against him.

The case has been consolidated with another involving six Algerian men who lived in Bosnia in the 1990s. They were arrested by Bosnian police in 2001 on suspicion of involvement in terrorism, but the following year the Supreme Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina ordered them released for lack of evidence.

They were immediately taken into custody by the U.S. military, shackled, put under hoods and shipped to Guantanamo, where they have been held since.

The lead plaintiff, Lakhdar Boumediene, was kept in a cold cell and deprived of sleep for 13 consecutive days, according to a report by the Center for Constitutional Rights, an advocacy group representing a number of the detainees.

In April, three of the court's liberal justices — Stephen G. Breyer, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg — voted to hear the pair of Guantanamo cases. Justices John Paul Stevens and Anthony M. Kennedy said they were willing to wait while the detainees and their lawyers went through an appeal process created by Congress, but the justices agreed that the issues involved were important.

The lawyers for Boumediene and Al Odah petitioned the justices to reconsider, because their clients faced many months of appeals that would almost certainly fail.

Friday's order did not say who voted to take up the case, but the lawyers involved assumed that Stevens and Kennedy had supplied the fourth and fifth votes.

Michael Moore is convincing: Our health care system is 'Sicko'

"I always thought the health insurance companies were there to help us," claims Michael Moore early in "Sicko," his portrait of America's failing health care industry and the politics that keep it in place. It sounds a little disingenuous coming from the filmmaking activist whose skepticism of government and big business is well documented in such films as "Roger and Me" and "Fahrenheit 9/11."

But then Moore's films are less "objective" documentaries than aggressive, ironic, often mocking calls to action punctuated by his folksy narration, alternately laced with sarcasm and pleading for understanding.

For "Sicko," Moore steps away from the spotlight to allow dozens of people -- all supposedly covered by health insurance -- to tell their own stories of being abandoned in the face of catastrophe, and then contrasts them with the citizens served by the Canadian, British and French systems of nationalized health care.

He idealizes systems fraught with their own problems to be sure, but even so he makes his point simply and convincingly: health care should not be a luxury but a right for American citizens, just like primary education, police services and fire department protection.

Moore eases up from the political sideshow theatrics that make his previous films so entertaining and maddening. At least until his controversial finale, a grandstanding gesture that takes a small group of ailing 9/11 rescue volunteers to Cuba for treatment that the U.S. won't provide.

The line between documentary and political theater is blurred, to say the least, and his tactics are calculated, but Moore is a crafty showman. He makes his point boldly and still gets medical attention for these American heroes refused coverage stateside.

With less lampooning and satirical asides, "Sicko" may be less "entertaining" than Moore's previous films, but it's also more affecting and effective. Put into context by Moore, government-financed medicine is less a revolutionary concept than a modest proposal.

Until yesterday, the nation has had an unusually competitive retail market, in part because antitrust laws made it illegal for sellers or manufacturers to agree on fixed prices. The Supreme Court, in a 1911 case involving a Dr. Miles and his patented medicines, had said that price-fixing agreements between manufacturers and retail sellers were flatly illegal.

The rule's practical effect was to discourage a manufacturer from setting a price -- leading, for instance, to stickers on new cars that list the "manufacturer's suggested retail price." However, in yesterday's opinion, the high court described this rule as out of step with modern economics.

At issue is an anti-terrorism law that Bush pushed through Congress last year taking away the right of the foreign terrorist suspects held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to have a judicial review of their detention.

The decision by the court to hear the two cases was a setback for the Bush administration which had urged the justices to turn down the appeals.

There are about 375 detainees now at the prison which critics, including some of Washington's allies, have demanded be closed. The first arrived more than five years ago after the United States launched its war on terrorism in response to the Sept. 11 attacks.

The indefinite detention and allegations of prisoner mistreatment at Guantanamo, which the U.S. military denies, have tarnished the U.S. image abroad. Human rights groups have demanded Guantanamo be closed and detainees charged with crimes or released.

Three of the nine justices in April dissented from the decision to reject the appeals by the Guantanamo prisoners. The high court on Friday gave no explanation for its reversal in now deciding to hear the cases.

After the appeals had been rejected in April, lawyers for the prisoners asked the court to reconsider, and the court on Friday agreed. It has been the first time in decades the high court has granted such a request.

The Supreme Court's action in the Guantanamo cases was announced the day after the justices had ended their 2006-2007 term.

Law firm Nelson Levine de Luca & Horst said Thursday it has acquired the eight-lawyer New York office of Chicago-based Querrey & Harrow. The group adds three partners to an existing small New York office for Nelson Levine, which represents insurance industry clients.

The Querrey group focuses on complex insurance and reinsurance litigation. Querrey partner George Vogrin will serve as managing partner of the New York office. He currently serves as coordinating counsel to underwriters at Lloyds of London, and represents other London-based insurers and reinsurers.

The 50-lawyer Nelson Levine opened its London office last year to serve the firm's international insurance and surplus lines insurer clients and said the latest addition will enable the firm to focus on the European insurance market.

"As a boutique firm focused solely on the insurance industry, the European insurance market is essential to our continued growth," Nelson Levine Chairman Michael Nelson said. "The addition of this practice is a perfect fit for us, as it expands our capabilities and provides additional depth and support as well as unique experience in exciting new practice areas."

Nelson said Nelson Levine is ahead of its five-year growth plan and has taken on new space at its Blue Bell headquarters that can accommodate 70 lawyers. The firm also has offices in Philadelphia; Cherry Hill and Newark, N.J.; and Columbus, Ohio.