Free Talk Live

The Supreme Court, finishing its first sitting of the new Term, agreed on Monday to hear a single new case, a plea by former U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft for immunity to a lawsuit claiming he misused a federal law to detain terrorism suspects without charging them with a crime.  The Court’s order marked the second time in the past two years that the Justices had stepped into a dispute centering on the Justice Department’s reaction to the “war on terrorism.”  The last time led to a victory for Ashcroft in a case that then ended in lower courts.