By BOB EGELKO, San Francisco Chronicle

Stephen Glass faked all or parts of more than 40 articles for national magazines from 1996 to 1998. In 2003, he acknowledged that his violation of journalistic standards was so severe that he would "never be welcomed within journalism, and rightly so."

Now the California Supreme Court will decide whether Glass' behavior was so bad as to make him morally unfit to practice law.

SAN FRANCISCO - Memories of the World War II internment of Japanese Americans -- with the Supreme Court's approval -- should remind Americans of the dangers of unchecked presidential power in wartime, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told a San Francisco law school audience this week.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court, in the 2011-12 term that starts Monday, will examine the legality of secret police tracking of motorists as well as jailhouse strip searches.

SAN FRANCISCO - Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is calling for equality for gays and lesbians and said the court should return to a 1972 ruling that halted executions nationwide.

SAN FRANCISCO - Reflecting a change in deportation policy, the Obama administration has dropped its attempt to remove a member of a same-sex California couple who overstayed his visa.

SAN FRANCISCO - A Southern California man who urged readers of an online message board to "shoot the n-----" two weeks before the 2008 presidential election, and said Barack Obama "will have a 50 cal in the head soon," was protected by freedom of speech, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

A new Obama administration memo approves federal prosecution of anyone in the business of growing or supplying marijuana for medical patients even if they are complying with state law.

OAKLAND, Calif. - As increasing numbers of Americans get their news online, the owner of CNN.com was accused in a lawsuit Wednesday of discriminating against the hard-of-hearing by failing to provide closed captions for videos posted on the Internet.

WASHINGTON - An atheist's challenge to the addition of "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, which stirred a legal and political frenzy nearly a decade ago, has quietly expired in the U.S. Supreme Court.

WASHINGTON - An atheist's challenge to the addition of "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, which stirred a legal and political frenzy nearly a decade ago, has quietly expired in the U.S. Supreme Court.