Senator Patrick Leahy and his allies have been trying since 2003 to reinforce federal judges. Their latest effort, the Federal Judgeship Act of 2009, would add 63 permanent appellate and district judges nationwide. The odds may still be against them.

On Wednesday, the senior ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee -- Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama -- reiterated his opposition to the judgeship effort. Sessions, who was once famously denied his own bid to join the federal bench, questioned both the need and the cost. He cited estimates that the new judges would cost $75 million in the first year, and upwards of $60 million a year after that.

"I'm just telling you, we don't have the money," Sessions said at a hearing of the Senate subcommittee on administrative oversight and the courts.

Other reasons, too, may contribute to the resistance. Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, noted that "poisonous partisanship" has been involved. After all, the minority party may be loath to create bench openings to be filled by a president with whom they disagree.

True, the number of civil cases filed in federal court jumped 4 percent to 338,153 last year, and the number of federal criminal cases likewise increased 4 percent to 70,896. And true, federal judges in the Eastern District of California -- meaning Fresno and Sacramento -- have an average weighted caseload of 1,095, more than twice the national average. And, true, the judgeship bill in classic logrolling fashion includes new permanent judge positions in 12 different states. Nonetheless, no Republican yet co-sponsors the bill and from the sound of things Wednesday, it may be a while before any does.

Eight members of the U.S. military who challenged a mandatory anthrax vaccination have lost, again.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a trial judge's earlier dismissal of the complaint. The 16-page opinion by Judge Merrick Garland -- a judge, recall, around whom some Supreme Court speculation has previously swirled -- provides among other things a useful chronology of the anthrax vaccination dispute.

Air Force Lt. Col. Thomas Rempfer and the seven other military members did not challenge the safety of the vaccine, though others apparently have. Instead, represented by John J. Michels, Jr. and Mark Zaid, they challenged the Food and Drug Administration's conclusion that it was effective. Substantively, the appellate panel agreed with the FDA that its conclusions were "in accord with the report of the committee of experts charged by the Institute of Medicine with conducting an independent review." Legally, the appellate panel determined that the FDA's decision deserved deference because it was a decision certainly within the agency's expertise.

Roger B. Hargrave told his estranged wife, Yvette Cade, that he would fry her like Crisco. Then he doused her with gasoline. Then he chased her and set her on fire. Cade suffered third-degree burns over half of her body in the October 2005 assault and is permanently disfigured.

Hargrave is now serving a life sentence in Cumberland, Maryland and is on the hook for a $40 million civil judgment subsequently secured by Cade.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer dismissed a bid by Hargrave to seek $45 million from the Washington Hospital Center. The very definition of an unsympathetic plaintiff, Hargrave had claimed that he lost his civil suit because the hospital failed to respond to his request for Cade's medical records. Judge Collyer reasoned that Hargrave didn't have a negligence claim to make against the hospital because the hospital did not owe him a legal duty to produce the medical records of another.

And so there goes White House counsel Gregory Craig, right under the proverbial bus.

The Washington Post on Friday, publishing what the web site bills as an exclusive, offers an interesting insider's look at how the White House is struggling with the Guantanamo Bay detention issue. On the surface, the story by the Post's Anne E. Kornblut and ProPublica's Dafna Linzer is all about how Craig's missteps led to his being replaced as the administration's lead guy on detention.

But the story is also something else: a case study in how to undercut a bureaucratic rival and sideline them permanently.

Craig's supposedly shaky tenure as White House counsel has been previously the subject of speculation: how long will he last, where might he go, etc. This article is the final push. First, the story lays on Craig's shoulders the blame for what is now considered a mistake: the naming of a date for the closing of Guantanamo Bay.

Second, but dramaturgically more important, is the way the unnamed sources tell the world that Craig is now yesterday's man. This is the classic  palace intrigue story: does anybody outside the Beltway care who is in charge of detention policy? But in Washington, this is the kiss of death. Try getting a good restaurant table now, Mr. Craig.

By going to the Post with the news that Craig has lost this key responsibility, his White House rivals colleagues have locked in the decision that, reading between the lines, Craig might not have fully accepted quite yet. This is a Rahmian act of public humiliation, essentially given Craig no choice but to accept whatever face-saving consolation prize will come his way; a nice ambassadorship, perhaps.

"The president retains full confidence in Gregory Craig," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs has not said yet but probably will soon, Suits & Sentences expects.

The Supreme Court public information office reports:

"U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was taken to the Washington Hospital Center this evening after feeling ill in her Chambers earlier in the day. The Justice fell ill at 4:50 p.m., about an hour after an iron sucrose infusion to treat an iron deficiency anemia was administered at the Office of the Attending Physician.

One hour following the completion of this infusion, she felt faint, developed light-headedness and fatigue. Medical evaluation disclosed a slightly low blood pressure, which can occur following this treatment. She was monitored at the Court, blood tests were performed and she was found to be in stable health. Fluids were administered and her symptoms improved, but she was taken as a precaution for evaluation at the Washington Hospital Center at approximately 7:45 p.m."

Justice Ginsburg had undergone a comprehensive medical exam in July. The court's public information office reported that this evaluation showed she was in "completely normal health" with the exception of a low red blood cell count caused by a deficiency of iron.

 In February, Ginsburg underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer. The cancer had been discovered during a routine exam. Physicians at the time said the operation was a success. Previously, the 76-year-old Ginsburg was treated for colon cancer.

Previewing an upcoming Supreme Court Term is an art, not a science. Still, it's possible to form some rules of thumb for what works and what doesn't.

What works: Quick summing up of the fact pattern, assessment of the case's importance without over-hyping it, prediction of what the court will do and a guidepost for what to look for.

What doesn't work: Rearguing the case or rehashing the conventional wisdom.

On Thursday, the American Constitution Society took its turn at the National Press Club. About 175 people -- many of them law students, by their appearance -- munched on some light sandwiches and awesome brownies and listened to a seven-lawyer panel set up the court's 2009-2010 Term.

Pamela Harris, who has rapidly become a Suits & Sentences favorite, showed how to do these programs the right way. Harris, executive director of the Georgetown Law Center's Supreme Court Institute, quickly set up the criminal law cases she was discussing and focused her assessment on what she thinks the court will do. See, this is helpful. By giving the audience her best guess of where the case goes from here,  Harris was providing tangible analytical assistance.

In this way, too, Constitutional Accountability Center President Doug Kendall was being helpful and pragmatic when he predicted the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board will be struck down and he advised the audience to watch for how narrow or broad the ruling is. The omnipresent Tom Goldstein did a really nice job of moderating, keeping things light and moving them along.

"How can you live with yourself?" Goldstein asked one of the advocates at one point.

Suits & Sentences also liked how Goldstein dove right in, without wasting time going on about all the sterling qualifications of the speakers.

But here's what doesn't work: when Kendall and attorney Michael Carvin essentially laid out their familiar competing arguments in the Citizens United V. FEC campaign finance case. We don't need another debate on the merits, we need an assessment of how the court will cope with the issue. Likewise, Lisa Kung of the Southern Center for Human Rights gave a lively introduction to a criminal law case -- but she went on far too long about the particular facts of this one particular case, and not nearly long enough on putting the case in context or analyzing how the newly reformed court might handle it.

What also doesn't work: repeating conventional wisdom. The highly experienced Georgetown law professor Susan Bloch seemed to phone in part of her presentation earlier this week, with observations along the lines that Sonia Sotomayor is the first Latina justice and is a former prosecutor.

Vexatious litigants try the patience of judges and lawyers alike. So it's nice when, as happened Wednesday, there's some public recognition given the officers of the court who must, as it were, take out the garbage.

This is how U.S. District Judge James Robertson in the District of Columbia begins his opinion in the case John Connolly versus United States of America:

"This Court has considerable sympathy for the government lawyer who was assigned this case and who had to sort through and respond to the many rambling, prolix documents plaintiff has filed..."

Now, that's what Suits & Sentences calls a lede.

Mr. Connolly's 318-page complaint, Judge Robertson goes on to explain, boils down to the assertion that "after all these years, background checks still turn up information about some trouble plaintiff got into when he was a young man, and that those background checks have interfered with his ability to get or to keep government employment." The judge said he found "fantastical" Mr. Connolly's claims about "secret tribunals" and the like, and overall found there to be nothing upon which to build a legitimate case.

The assistant U.S. attorney, by the way, who is on the record as handling the case and thereby winning the judge's sympathy is Wynne P. Kelly.

An oddball case arising through the U.S. Court of Veterans Appeals raises the question about the difference between a public and private prison. As far as benefits are concerned, the court ruled Sept. 18, there is no meaningful difference.

Army veteran William H. Wanless brought this case. Following his two year peacetime service, Mr. Wanless won VA compensation payments for what the court described as "enucleation of the right eye, chronic lumbar strain with degenerative disc disease, tinnitus, high-frequency hearing loss, and residuals of a cervical strain."

Then life really turned bad, and in 1991 Wanless was convicted of strangling his wife and ultimately sentenced in Oklahoma to life in prison without possibility of parole. Consequently, the Veterans Administration -- following set policy concerning incarcerated veterans -- cut his compensation payments from $808 a month to $85 a month.

Creatively, Wanless argued that he was still eligible for his full VA payments because he was being held in a privately run prison rather than a state-owned facility.

The appellate court rejected the argument, noting that the state is still paying for the prison, and that "Congress has explicitly concluded that if the taxpayers are financing a veteran's incarceration, it is contrary to the public good to also pay him full VA disability benefits."