As the Senate prepares to vote on whether Elena Kagan should fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, there remain a substantial number of other vacancies in the nation’s lower federal courts that urgently need filling.

Currently, there are about 100 vacancies in the lower federal courts. The American Bar Association says the lack of judges is affecting the efficiency and fairness of the justice system.

ABA President Carolyn B. Lamm said, “Our courts are already terribly strained at the federal level because of the caseload and the workload, and when you’re a hundred justices down…that’s a big gap.  We have speedy trial rules that require them to put criminal cases first.  As a result, all of the civil proceedings are put off and there is a real gap in terms of a significant delay as a result of the vacancies. It is edging toward a crisis not to have a full bench.”

Even if all the vacancies were filled, said Lamm, a significant number of new judgeships would still be necessary to handle caseload growth.  In fact, the Judicial Conference of the United States is recommending 67 new permanent and temporary judgeships. 

Beyond the existing 100 vacancies, more than 20 additional judges have announced that they will retire in the next several months. Since the start of the 111th Congress, President Obama has made 78 nominations to fill the empty seats, and the Senate has confirmed 36 of the nominees.  

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday extended gun rights to every state and city in the nation in a ruling involving Chicago's 28-year-old handgun ban.

By a 5-4 vote and splitting along conservative and liberal lines, the nation's highest court extended its landmark 2008 ruling that individual Americans have a constitutional right to own guns to all the cities and states for the first time.

The right to bear arms, under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, previously applied to just federal laws and federal enclaves, like Washington D.C., where the court struck down a similar handgun ban in its 2008 ruling.

Gun rights have been one of the country's most divisive social, political and legal issues. Some 90 million people in the United States have an estimated 200 million guns.

The United States is estimated to have the world's highest civilian gun ownership rate. Gun deaths average about 80 a day, 34 of them homicides, according to U.S. government statistics.

The ruling, issued on the last day of the Supreme Court's term, was a victory for four Chicago-area residents, two gun rights groups and the politically powerful National Rifle Association.

The nation's highest court agreed to decide whether the 2007 state law infringed on federal immigration powers and should be struck down.

The law at issue in the case is different from the strict new Arizona immigration law passed earlier this year and criticized by President Barack Obama that requires the police to determine the immigration status of any person suspected of being in the country illegally.

But the Supreme Court's eventual decision in the case, depending on how the justices rule, could end up affecting the pending legal challenges to the new law as well.

The Obama administration last month urged the Supreme Court to rule that the 2007 law was preempted by federal immigration rules and would disrupt the careful legal balance that the U.S. Congress struck nearly 25 years ago.

The Arizona law suspends or revokes licenses to do business in the state in order to penalize employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. It also requires employers to use an electronic verification system to check the work-authorization status of employees through federal records.

The Legal Arizona Workers Act was adopted after a federal immigration overhaul law died in Congress in 2007.

Nearly a year after he went from anonymity to notoriety, Michael Jackson's doctor returns to court for a pretrial hearing that will determine when he goes to trial and what he will be able to do in the meantime.

Dr. Conrad Murray is likely to face the usual placards and catcalls from Jackson fans denouncing him outside the courthouse and members of Jackson's family glaring at him inside the courtroom Monday.

First on the agenda will be Murray's fight to retain his California medical license. He has not been practicing in the state, but his attorney, Ed Chernoff, has maintained that loss of his license here would have a domino effect on his practices in Texas and Nevada.

Chernoff said in documents filed Friday that those two states have reached agreements to allow Murray to practice as long as he abides by a judge's order not to administer anesthetics such as propofol, which was blamed in Jackson's death.

Former Twin Cities attorney Michael S. Margulies pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to wire fraud, admitting that he embezzled $2 million from his former law firm and its clients.

The plea was the result of a deal Margulies, 56, struck with federal prosecutors. U.S. District Judge David Doty accepted the plea and ordered a presentence investigation to help him decide what punishment the former real estate attorney should get when he's sentenced.

Federal sentencing guidelines call for a maximum of 20 years in prison on wire fraud.

Margulies was released until sentencing, with no date set.

The plea came 13 days after Margulies was charged with a single count of wire fraud. The felony charge was the most recent event in a fallen career.

Margulies had been a partner at Lindquist & Vennum, one of the Twin Cities' most prestigious law firms, and he lived in a $1.5 million mansion on St. Paul's Summit Avenue. He was a member of the St. Paul Planning Commission and served on the board of the Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis.

But in March, his law partners determined he was taking money from the firm and some of its clients. They fired him and reported the alleged thefts to authorities. The Minnesota Supreme Court disbarred him in April.

The criminal charge said that from 1994 to this year, Margulies embezzled about $2 million through false documents, false expenses, false invoices and forged checks.

The Supreme Court on Friday refused to delay ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's trial on corruption charges, set to begin next week.

Justice John Paul Stevens rejected Blagojevich's request without comment. His decision came shortly after the Obama administration told the high court that it opposed Blagojevich's request.

The former governor's trial is scheduled to begin on Thursday.

In Chicago, Blagojevich attorney Sheldon Sorosky said after hearing about the decision that the former governor's legal team was ready for the trial to get under way.

"We didn't prepare presuming that the Supreme Court would rule in our favor — we prepared for the worst," Sheldon Sorosky said. "The Supreme Court has ruled and that's that."

Blagojevich had asked the high court to delay his trial until the justices rule first in pending cases about the constitutionality of the federal honest-services fraud law. Prosecutors have charged Blagojevich with violating the fraud law and other crimes.

Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal said the evidence on the honest services charges "is the same as that underlying the bribery, extortion, and racketeering counts." That means the flow of the trial won't be affected by what the Supreme Court says about the honest services charges, Katyal said in court papers.