A Knock on Sarbanes-Oxley

(Reuters) - When Peregrine Financial collapsed earlier this month, a nagging question resurfaced. As in the implosion of Lehman Brothers, the fall of Bernard Madoff and other cases in recent years, many asked: Where were the accountants? That this question still arises could be seen as an indictment of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law, enacted 10 years ago on Monday. The law was a response to accountants' failures to sound the alarm about financial misconduct at Enron Corp, WorldCom and a host of other companies. But, lawyers and analysts say that for the most part Sarbanes-Oxley is working. ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Monday struck down part of a law to prevent fraud committed by companies like Enron and WorldCom, saying a board to police public companies' auditors violated the Constitution.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court struck down on Monday part of the 2002 law that created a national board to police auditors of public companies, ruling that it violated the constitutional requirement on the separation of powers among the branches of government.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police usually must try to obtain a search warrant from a judge before ordering blood tests for drunken-driving suspects. The justices sided with a Missouri man who was subjected to a blood test without a warrant and found to have nearly twice the legal limit of alcohol in his blood.

OTTAWA – The Supreme Court will rule on Friday in the case of a woman accused of concealing her newborn baby’s body, a decision which some legal experts say could touch on the politically thorny issue of when a fetus becomes a human being under the law. Although the case of Ivana Levkovic deals specifically with the law around concealing a child’s body, at least one expert says there’s room for the country’s top court to give a judicial opinion on when human life begins.

For the last several years, the tobacco industry has been fighting a federal law that requires, among other restrictions, cigarette manufacturers to place graphic

The US Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that a small, controversial, anti-gay church has the right to picket military funerals as part of the US Constitution's free-speech guarantee."Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and -- as it did here -- inflict great pain," the justices said.They ruled eight-to-one in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church, which had been sued by the father of Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder, who was slain in Iraq in 2006 and whose funeral was picketed by members of the Kansas-based church.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ruled narrowly Tuesday in favor of a government policy that threatens broadcasters with fines over the use of even a single curse word on live television, yet stopped short of deciding whether the policy violates the Constitution....