The California law, however, cannot be enforced without the approval of the Bush administration's Environmental Protection Agency. The state asked the EPA two years ago for a waiver that would allow it to exceed federal clean-air requirements and regulate cars' greenhouse gas emissions starting with 2009 models.

The EPA has never denied California such a waiver, but the agency has been lobbied by auto companies and by Bush's transportation secretary to deny the request. The state has sued the agency to force a decision, and EPA Administrator Steven Johnson has promised to decide by the end of the year.

Ishii's ruling "leaves the Bush administration as the last remaining roadblock to California's regulation of tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions," said state Attorney General Jerry Brown, whose office defended the law.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed another groundbreaking law last year seeking a 25 percent reduction in all greenhouse gases emitted in California by 2020. He said Wednesday that with motor vehicles contributing nearly 30 percent of those emissions, "it is imperative that we be granted the fuel waiver from the federal government."

Environmental groups that joined the defense of the state law praised the ruling. The law's author, former Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, a Los Angeles-area Democrat now with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the decision "affirms California's legal right to clean its air and protect the health of its citizens."

The ruling was the result of a 2004 lawsuit filed by auto industry trade organizations that wanted to overturn the California law. On Wednesday, the auto industry groups were noncommittal on whether they would appeal, apparently awaiting the EPA decision on the state's waiver request. Dave McCurdy, chief executive of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, repeated his group's position that the issue should be off-limits for individual states.

"We need a consistent national policy for fuel economy, and this nationwide policy cannot be written by a single state or group of states - only the federal government," he said.

Ishii, however, disagreed with the auto industry's claim that the state's curb on greenhouse gas emissions amounted to a forbidden intrusion on federal regulation of gas mileage. There is no conflict between the federal government's efforts to improve fuel economy and a state's attempts to protect its residents' health and resources by reducing air pollution, the judge said.

The ruling is the latest in a series of court decisions in favor of states and environmental groups that have argued that laws originally enacted to fight smog can be used against greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide and other fumes from tailpipes and smokestacks that scientists believe cause global warming.

Bush opposes mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions and says the nation should address the problem through voluntary industry action and modest increases in fuel economy standards. But in April, over Bush administration objections, the Supreme Court ruled that the emissions are pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act, and that the EPA must regulate them unless it can back a refusal to do so with scientific evidence.

In September, a federal judge in Vermont upheld a state law identical to California's auto emissions statute, a ruling that automakers have appealed. Last month, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the federal government's new miles-per-gallon standards for SUVs and light trucks were too lax because they failed to account for the effect of fuel consumption on global warming.

The California law requires car manufacturers to lower emissions gradually, to 23 percent below current new-car levels by 2012 and 30 percent by 2016. It does not specify how the reductions are to be accomplished, but the state Air Resources Board says automakers can reach the goals by a combination of improving gas mileage, implementing new technology, using alternative fuels and reducing leaks of greenhouse gases from air conditioners.

The lawsuit by auto trade groups, manufacturers and dealers argued that the California statute conflicts with federal law. The suit contended that the only practical way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to increase gas mileage, a subject regulated exclusively by the federal government.

In Wednesday's 57-page ruling, Ishii said California is not directly regulating fuel economy even if its law has the effect of forcing increases in gas mileage.

"The required increase in fuel economy is incidental to the state law's purpose of assuring protection of public health and welfare under the Clean Air Act," Ishii said.

Compliance with the law, he said, "can be at least partially achieved through changes that are not directly reflected in fuel economy improvements," such as using other fuels and improving air conditioners.

Melton said he hoped the council would agree to hire Jackson law firm Coxwell & Associates, which represented the mayor earlier this year in a criminal case.

The Phelps Dunbar firm was hired in August to represent the city in four lawsuits in which Melton was named, but in a letter recently recommended that the city hire another firm in two of those cases. Phelps Dunbar's letter said, "a review of the facts thus far leads us to the conclusion that the mayor was acting in a manner beyond the scope of his duties as mayor if the allegations concerning his conduct are true in each of these instances."

Melton has said he was within his duties when he and his entourage damaged a duplex on Ridgeway Street and when he banged on a resident's front door with a shotgun. Both homeowners sued him and the city.

Phelps Dunbar also recommended that the city pay Melton's legal bills, then ask a court to decide if he should repay the money. The mayor, who originally said he would pay his own fees, agrees with the firm.

"(City) legal has said that council has a fiduciary responsibility to (do) that," Melton said Friday.

Phelps Dunbar charges the city $185 per hour and has recommended Coxwell be paid the same. To date, Phelps Dunbar has billed the city for more than $19,000 related to the four cases.

Merrida Coxwell said he was interested in the cases but said he would step away if they generated undue controversy.

"It would save the city of Jackson a little bit of money," said Coxwell, who along with Dale Danks was a member of Melton's criminal defense team in the duplex case. Melton and his body guards were acquitted in that case.

The council on Dec. 7 discussed the lawsuit legal representation issue in closed session but made no decision.

Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller contends that while she ordered the clerk's office closed promptly at 5 p.m., state law clearly gave attorneys for death row inmate Michael Wayne Richard the power to contact judges on the court directly.

In papers filed in U.S. district court in Austin, Keller said Richard's lawyers made no attempt to contact any judges on the court, even though three were available Sept. 25, the date of Richard's execution in 1986 rape and murder of Marguerite Dixon, a Houston-area mother of seven. Keller said the clerk's office was closed but the court's building remained open.

Richard's lawyers were in Houston. The court is in Austin.

Keller has garnered national attention for refusing to extend the court's closing time prior to Richard's execution, despite calls from Richard's attorneys alerting her office they were experiencing computer problems and begging for extra time. But in a motion, Keller said Texas law "provides a clear and unambiguous avenue for litigants to file documents with the (Court of Criminal Appeals) directly through any of its judges, so Richard did not need the CCA clerk's office to stay open after hours to file his motion."

This is the first time Keller has claimed Richard's lawyers could have directly gone to other judges on the court. She previously has tried to shift blame to Richard's lawyers by saying they had all day to file.

Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, called Keller's argument "shameless."

"Everyone knows that the key is the clerk's office," said Harrington, whose office is representing Richard's daughter, Doreen Anderson, as well as other attorneys who have filed complaints against Keller for her handling of the appeal.

"The clerks are the ones who intercept the calls, who say 'it's shut down,' " Harrington said. "The rules of procedure in the law are supposed to serve justice and here you have a case where a guy's life is at stake. It's literally a matter of life or death and to fall back on some off-the-wall assertion, 'go find a judge and file it that way' is absurd. It makes a farce of the law."

DoubleClick and the FTC have denied that Jones Day has represented the company before the FTC.

But on Thursday, EPIC and CDD filed a second complaint with the FTC, showing a cached Web page claiming that Jones Day is advising DoubleClick "on the international and U.S. antitrust and competition law aspects of its planned $3.1 billion acquisition by Google Inc." The Jones Day Web page was later changed, the groups said.

EPIC and CDD said Thursday they were filing a Freedom of Information Act request seeking all records on the relationship between Jones Day and DoubleClick.

One conclusion to draw is that "Jones Day has sought to conceal the nature, scope, and duration of the relationship with its client DoubleClick by altering web pages," said a letter signed by executive directors of both organizations. FTC spokespeople who denied the relationship were "either misinformed or willfully misled the public," the letter says.

An FTC spokeswoman declined to comment on the new complaint. Representatives of Jones Day and DoubleClick weren't immediately available for comment.

The FTC and DoubleClick downplayed the connection Wednesday, saying Jones Day has not advised DoubleClick on matters before the FTC. Instead, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett has been DoubleClick's outside counsel since July of 2005 and has advised it in matters before the FTC, DoubleClick said in a statement.

"Jones Day was not engaged to represent, and has not represented DoubleClick before the Federal Trade Commission or appeared before the commission on DoubleClick’s behalf," the company said.

In April, EPIC, CDD, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG) asked the FTC to block Google's acquisition of DoubleClick unless the combined company made changes to its privacy practices. The combined company would hold a vast amount of private information on Web users, the groups said.

Normally, that would force the government to defend itself against obstruction allegations. But the CIA may have an out: its clandestine network of overseas prisons.

While judges focused on the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and tried to guarantee that any evidence of detainee abuse would be preserved, the CIA was performing its toughest questioning half a world away. And by the time President Bush publicly acknowledged the secret prison system, interrogation videos of two terrorism suspects had been destroyed.

The CIA destroyed the tapes in November 2005. That June, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. had ordered the Bush administration to safeguard "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler issued a nearly identical order that July.

At the time, that seemed to cover all detainees in U.S. custody. But Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the terrorism suspects whose interrogations were videotaped and then destroyed, weren't at Guantanamo Bay. They were prisoners that existed off the books — and apparently beyond the scope of the court's order.

Attorneys say that might not matter. David H. Remes, a lawyer for Yemeni citizen Mahmoad Abdah and others, asked Kennedy this week to schedule a hearing on the issue. Kennedy gave the government until Friday to respond.

Though Remes acknowledged the tapes might not be covered by Kennedy's order, he said, "It is still unlawful for the government to destroy evidence, and it had every reason to believe that these interrogation records would be relevant to pending litigation concerning our client."

In legal documents filed in January 2005, Assistant Attorney General Peter D. Keisler assured Kennedy that government officials were "well aware of their obligation not to destroy evidence that may be relevant in pending litigation."

For just that reason, officials inside and outside of the CIA advised against destroying the interrogation tapes, according to a former senior intelligence official involved in the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because it is under investigation.

Exactly who signed off on the decision is unclear, but CIA director Michael Hayden told the agency in an e-mail this week that internal reviewers found the tapes were not relevant to any court case.

Remes said that decision raises questions about whether other evidence was destroyed. Abu Zubaydah's interrogation helped lead investigators to alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Remes said Abu Zubaydah may also have been questioned about other detainees. Such evidence might have been relevant in their court cases.

"It's logical to infer that the documents were destroyed in order to obstruct any inquiry into the means by which statements were obtained," Remes said.

He stopped short, however, of accusing the government of obstruction. That's just one of the legal issues that could come up in court. A judge could also raise questions about contempt of court or spoliation, a legal term for the destruction of evidence in "pending or reasonably foreseeable litigation."

The American Civil Liberties Union filed court documents Wednesday, claiming the destruction of the tapes violated a judge's order in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The group cited a 2004 order by U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who told the CIA to produce or identify all records pertaining to the treatment of detainees in custody.

The tapes were also destroyed at a time when attorneys for al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui were seeking interrogation videos that might help show their client wasn't a part of the 9/11 attacks.

When the Supreme Court hears arguments today about the rights of suspects held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, the role of the courts in the fight against terrorism will be as much an issue as the fate of the prisoners.

The president and Congress have already made their opinions clear: The courts may not "hear or consider" challenges from foreigners held as enemy combatants at the U.S. facility in Cuba.

But in what some scholars say is a critical separation-of-powers case, the nine justices will have the final word on whether such a court-stripping prohibition is constitutional, and on how deferential the judicial branch should be in the prosecution of a war unlike any the country has ever faced.

The court has been critical of Bush administration policies over the past three years, but "this case is probably more important than the other ones because it's a direct conflict between the political branches that have traditionally run wars and the courts," said John Yoo, a former Justice Department official who helped design the Bush administration's legal strategies for the terrorism fight.

Yoo denounced the court's involvement and said that it has never received such an unequivocal message that the "joint wishes of the president and Congress" are to "push the courts out" of the process.

Attorneys for the detainees and a host of international and domestic interest groups supporting them say that is precisely when the courts are most needed.

The libertarian Cato Institute, in a brief filed by lawyer Timothy Lynch, said it is "imperative that this Court eschew a deferential posture and stand, in words of James Madison, as an 'impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the Legislative or Executive.' "

Two cases, Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States, have been consolidated into one and brought on behalf of 37 foreigners who remain among the approximately 300 detainees at Guantanamo Bay. All were captured on foreign soil and have been designated enemy combatants. They proclaim their innocence and for years have asked federal courts for a writ of habeas corpus, the ancient right allowing prisoners to challenge their detentions.

Some have been imprisoned since soon after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and while they have won at the Supreme Court before, none has had a full hearing before a federal judge.

The court has confronted the issue before, ruling in 2004 in Rasul v. Bush that federal habeas corpus statutes extended to Guantanamo Bay detainees because of the unique control that the U.S. government has over the land.

The Republican-led Congress responded by changing the law, and after another adverse court ruling and at the urging of the Bush administration, it passed the Military Commissions Act in October 2006. The legislation endorsed a military system for designating detainees as enemy combatants and for trying those charged with crimes, and it strictly limited judicial oversight.

"The detainees now enjoy greater procedural protections and statutory rights to challenge their wartime detentions than any other captured enemy combatants in the history of war," Solicitor General Paul D. Clement said in his brief to the court. "Yet they claim an entitlement to more."

Specifically, attorneys contend that Guantanamo Bay detainees have a constitutional guarantee of habeas, a right that Congress may suspend only in times of "rebellion or invasion."

The government disputes that, but says that even if it were so, previous court rulings allow an adequate substitute for habeas proceedings.

But detainees who appear before the military Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which determine whether they can be held indefinitely as enemy combatants, have fewer rights than they would in habeas proceedings. They are not represented by counsel, do not have access to all evidence used against them and cannot prevail on a judge to release them if the case against them is not made.

"Habeas is a judicial remedy," former solicitor general Seth P. Waxman, who will argue for the detainees, said in a brief. "It cannot be replaced by a process that (like the CSRT) is ultimately controlled by the jailer."

The position is supported by a long list of organizations that have filed briefs with the court on behalf of the detainees: Israeli leaders, who say that terrorism suspects in their country receive a detention hearing within 14 days; a group of 383 European parliamentarians; former U.S. diplomats; law professors; retired military leaders; and even Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who voted for the Military Commissions Act and said at the time that the court could "clean up" the parts of the law he thought were unconstitutional.

"To avoid an incongruous legal 'black hole' at Guantanamo, this Court should strike down the MCA's illegal suspension of the Great Writ and allow Congress to establish procedures consistent with what national security and the Constitution require," Specter wrote.

Four conservative legal organizations support the Bush administration, urging the court not to use what the Washington Legal Foundation calls its "raw power" to overturn the work of Congress and the president.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who was the deciding vote last year in the court's most controversial cases, appears to be in the spotlight again; Kathleen M. Sullivan, director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford University, jokingly referred to the carefully tailored briefs in the case as "love letters to Justice Kennedy."

Kennedy is believed to have provided the key fifth vote required for the court to consider the latest detainee case. In his concurring opinion in the 2004 Rasul, he acknowledged the difficulty the court faces in times of war.

"There is a realm of political authority over military affairs where the judicial power may not enter. The existence of this realm acknowledges the power of the President as Commander in Chief, and the joint role of the President and the Congress, in the conduct of military affairs," Kennedy wrote.

But he added that the "necessary corollary" is when courts "maintain the power and the responsibility to protect persons from unlawful detention even where military affairs are implicated."